Retail dealmaking frenzy reaches smaller brands hoping to cash in

afr.com:

Zimmerman has a new owner; so too does Seafolly. Bondi Sands was snapped up by a Japanese conglomerate for $450 million, and Aesop was sold for a record eight times that sum. Now the deal-making frenzy is pushing deeper into Australia’s consumer goods sector with smaller brands hoping to cash in on their businesses.

Shelley Du Flou’s Vine Apparel was founded 14 years ago at the Mona Vale markets in northern Sydney selling breezy sun dresses. This year, the company is on track for $43 million in sales and estimates that number could reach $70 million by 2026.

Shelley Du Flou is the founder of Vine Apparel. Louie Douvis

“I started with $32,000 in my bank, my first lot of stock that I bought, I spent $2000. I had some friends, five friends, and they come over to my house, and they spent $750 in five minutes on the first lot of stuff… I was like, ‘OK, I need to reinvest that’, and that’s how it started,” she says.

“We just want to make our customers happy. It sounds really obvious, but that’s how we’ve grown.”

Few of Du Flou’s items sell for over $100. According to a teaser sent to potentially interested parties, Vine boasts average monthly volumes exceeding 30,000 orders, and a low returns rate of 6.5 per cent.

Du Flou has one shop at Cromer, between Narrabeen and Dee Why, and wants to sell the business which has nearly 400,000 active customers – those who have bought in the past 12 months – 70 per cent of whom are returning shoppers. Vine has a simple business model, relying on local production with a small executive team to keep costs low.

Normalised EBITDA is tipped to reach $12.7 million by 2026, up from $6.2 million in 2023. Profit margins are sitting at more than 15 per cent and digital marketing spend is about 20