‘You have to be famous for something’: The retail leader reshaping Melbourne’s fashion fest

I’m early to meet Launa Inman for lunch at Supernormal, but she is even more punctual, already seated in a booth by the window.

Inman is dressed immaculately, as you might expect from the chair of the Melbourne Fashion Festival, in a royal blue Hugo Boss sleeveless dress.

She has lived and breathed fashion and retail all her working life in a career that has spanned roles as the chief executive of Target, Officeworks and surfwear brand Billabong.

Inman says she draws on all this experience as chair of the festival, which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary, but there have been a few regrets along the way.

Taking on the role of chief executive at formerly ASX-listed Billabong is one of them.

“That probably wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made going there,” she says. “Billabong was in trouble, but I didn’t realise how much. I should have done some better due diligence in hindsight.”

Our waiter comes over to discuss the wine list, and after some discussion recommends a chardonnay from the Macedon Ranges.

“I love trying new wines,” Inman says happily. “She really sold it to me.”

While Inman enjoys a glass of wine over lunch, she asks not to be photographed with a glass in her hand.

As one of only six women to lead an ASX-listed company when she was chief executive of Billabong, Inman has learnt to be careful about the way she is perceived.

As a woman who did not surf, Inman was regarded as an outsider at Billabong and experienced extra scrutiny.

“It is like it’s tribal,” Inman says. “If you’ve got a surfboard, and even if you are in private equity, it’s a common bond how you ride those waves. I did not get that initially. I went in with a very business approach.”

Inman says Billabong staff were used to taking regular breaks to go surfing and would skateboard down the hallways.

“They would come to work in shorts and T-shirts, but I did draw the line at barefoot,” she says.

Within six weeks of arriving at the company, Inman had to announce a profit downgrade and an equity raising.

“It wasn’t my fault, but there was a lot of, ‘Why have you got a woman here who doesn’t even surf running the organisation?’” she says.

Our first dish arrives, a cucumber and radish salad topped with sprigs of mint. It’s fresh and vibrant on a hot summer day, and we both dive in eagerly with our chopsticks.

While heading up Billabong was a challenge, it wasn’t the first time Inman had experienced adversity in her career.

She was born and raised in Zimbabwe, where she majored in accounting and economics. A part-time job at a council helped Inman realise she didn’t want to be an accountant.

“It was brilliant that I did it because it has enabled me to really know my way around the balance sheet and understand the finance,” she says. “It became incredibly pertinent as I progressed up the corporate ladder.”

However, the civil war in Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known at the time, prompted Inman to move to South Africa with her now husband.

“It was pretty clear that the country was falling apart,” Inman says.

The only way out of the country was in a convoy to the border with armed vehicles and helicopters.

In South Africa, Inman started working in fashion and retail with roles at specialty manufacturers and department stores.

She was in the country for Nelson Mandela’s release and for the first post-apartheid elections.

“It was a very exciting time to see all these people actually eventually have a vote,” Inman says. “I remember reading in Life magazine that they anticipated a million people would die through riots, and in fact it was the most incredibly peaceful election that went on for five days.”

However, after the election, rising crime and safety concerns in South Africa led Inman and her young family to apply to immigrate to Australia.

“While we were in Johannesburg, we had a really bad incident where someone broke into our house and held our children at knifepoint, and that was it,” Inman says. “It became a question of not whether to get out, but when.”

Inman moved to Australia in 1997. All the family were able to take from South Africa was their furniture and 7000 rand, which was the equivalent of about $4000 each.

Her children were aged 11 and nine at the time and left behind their wider family, friends and pets.

“It was so stressful,” Inman says of trying to relocate to Australia. “In those days they didn’t really have work visas. You had to be a permanent resident, and to become a permanent resident you had to have a job, but you couldn’t get a job without residency.”

After a series of interviews, Inman joined Big W, which she found was a steep learning curve. She had never worked in big-box retail.

“It was a real baptism of fire,” Inman says. “It’s all about price, all about volume, and that circularity, that the more you sell, that the more you can produce and you can lower the price.”

Inman says discount retail was not a market she particularly loved because a lot had to be taken out of garments to make the price point.

“But what I walked away having learnt was phenomenal,” she says.

Our next dish arrives, a pair of fat, bronzed scallops from Shark Bay dripping in kelp butter.

I wonder aloud exactly where Shark Bay is, and Inman says it’s in Western Australia. “We went there, and we swam with the whale sharks,” she says.

‘You can’t change a business at one time, you have to work at it. An elephant, no matter how big they are, they can still only take one mouthful at a time.’

Launa Inman reflects on her time at Target

Inman says she applied some of the lessons she learnt at Big W throughout her career, including at the Melbourne Fashion Festival.

“It’s not just about fashion, but it’s about having that business acumen to understand how you take that fashion and commercialise it,” she says. “I found that fascinating, and that, I think today, has been one of the reasons I was successful in retail. I always thought there might be seven trends that were being shown to us, but what is going to make the money? What’s appropriate for our consumer?”

From Big W, Inman was poached to work at Target in 2001, which she says was “going through a torrid time”.

Walking around Target’s stores at the time, Inman saw they were overstocked and now says the business was not making markdowns to preserve profit and “had gone off-piste”.

“If it doesn’t sell, mark it down, move on,” she says. “The quicker you mark it down and get rid of it the better. If it doesn’t sell within eight weeks, why would it sell in six months?”

Inman helped turn Target around from a $32 million loss to a $54 million profit in 18 months, a transformation she describes as “incredible”.

From Target, Inman went to Officeworks, which at the time was valued at about $1 billion, in her first role as chief executive. She recalls the retailer’s push into selling technology from being a stationery and filing cabinet specialist.

Then it was back to Target as chief executive, in a position, Inman says, she returned the focus to children’s wear as it was a key traffic driver for the business.

“It didn’t matter whether you earned $50,000 a year or $120,000 a year, you came to Target for children’s wear. In those days, they owned it. I knew if we wanted to turn the business around, we had to get the children’s wear right,” she says.

It’s time for Supernormal’s signature dish of lobster rolls, with the sweet, creamy lobster nestled in a soft brioche bun.

Inman tries to eat the roll delicately by dissecting it, but given I am not being photographed while eating, I have no hesitation in just biting in.

We agree it’s a signature dish for a reason.

Inman says she tried to change things gradually during her time at Target.

“You can’t change a business at one time, you have to work at it,” she says. “An elephant, no matter how big they are, they can still only take one mouthful at a time.”

Inman says she concentrated on what would make a difference and what the business was famous for: children’s wear, underwear and women’s wear.

“You have to be famous for something,” she says. “You have to have a differentiator, just like we are at the Melbourne Fashion Festival because we are the largest consumer-facing festival in Australia, and that’s our differentiator. You’ve got to have something that makes you different from your competitors.”

At Target, Inman introduced collaborations with fashion designers, including Stella McCartney and Dion Lee.

“Just because you don’t have a lot of money doesn’t mean you don’t want to look good,” she says.

As at Target, Inman has her work cut out to transform the fashion festival’s fortunes. Its most recent financial report shows the festival posted a loss of $711,390, with a revenue of $4.57 million down from $5.75 million for the 2024 financial year.

“I took over as chair during COVID,” Inman says. “That was also challenging. I always get these challenging situations.”

Inman says she is proud that the festival put on a show every year, even during COVID.

“The challenge for us was the cost of putting on the runway,” she says. “Whether you have 100 people watching it or whether you have 1500 people watching it, it’s the same cost.”

Ticket sales for the 30th anniversary year are strong, Inman says, and she is excited about hosting Nepalese-American fashion designer Prabal Gurung at the festival.

Inman wants to see fashion taken more seriously as a major economic force, and points out that in Victoria, the textile and fashion industry turns over about $8.5 billion annually.

“That’s a lot of money,” she says. “We export more fashion and textiles than we do beer and wine.”

One segment of the industry Inman is not a fan of is fast fashion.

“I feel that it brings absolutely nothing to this country,” she says. “One of the things is that we have no idea where these products are coming from.”

Inman points to discount retailers Temu and Shein, which she says are valued at more than $3 billion each but don’t pay any duty or tax or manufacture in Australia.

“They bring in planeloads every single night,” she says. “Any other retailer has to have very clear criteria of no slavery, strong quality control, no children working under an agreed age. They don’t have any of those criteria.”

Inman despairs that the fast fashion giants are taking a large proportion of trade from Australian retailers, a problem which has “massive repercussions and ripple effects” for Australian designers.

She believes the fast fashion giants should have to pay duties, as they do in the United States.

For Inman, when it comes to promoting fashion, it’s all about business.

“You can’t just say it’s beautiful fashion,” she says. “There has to be a purpose, an end game to it.”

The Melbourne Fashion Festival runs until Saturday, February 28.

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