MEET $56M OUR WOMAN
From Geelong’s Cotton On to new fashion empire
TANIA Austin is one of the richest women in Australia, but very few people would know her name or face — and that’s just the way she likes it.
The owner of fast-growing fashion label Decjuba and former co-owner of Geelongbased Cotton On flies under the radar, preferring to spend downtime at home with her three children, three dogs and guinea pig rather than attend glamour VIP events.
With an estimated fortune of more than $56 million, Ms Austin, 46, is in the top 30 richest women in Australia but you wouldn’t know it when you meet her. There’s no pretension, no team of minders and she’s warm, passionate, engaging and funny.
Ms Austin has built Decjuba from a fledgling fashion brand with five stores in 2008 to fast approaching 100 stores and a booming online business in Australia and New Zealand.
In July, she celebrates 10 years in the business. It’s no small feat at a time when Australian fashion labels are sadly closing at a rapid rate.
She has 936 employees, three of whom are men, and refers constantly to “the team” and the satisfaction she gets from helping them reach their potential.
“People say, ‘You must love the travel and you’re in fashion, that's so exciting’, but one of the things I love the most and what drives me is pushing and challenging other people and seeing them grow,” she said at her Cremorne office.
Ms Austin made her initial fortune as co-founder of globally-successful Cotton On with ex-husband Nigel Austin. The couple — who have three children, Sky, 15, Jett, 12, and Zane, 11 — split just over 10 years ago.
Ms Austin decided she needed to step away from the rapidly growing Cotton On Group (then with 400 stores) and make a fresh start.
“At the time it was the right thing to do and it wasn’t hard, it was like any other chapter in your life,” she said.
With young children and a $50 million fortune from Cotton On, Ms Austin could have been forgiven for taking time out.
But while family comes first, she said it was not in her DNA to do nothing.
There was only a six-month break between leaving Cotton On and buying Decjuba.
“I needed to throw myself back into something. I’d been doing that for so long, it would have been a void not to have it,” she said.
“It was a conscious decision to go into a different type of product, having been in really high-volume fast fashion and at a much lower price point (at Cotton On).
“I was getting older so I wanted to do something around what I wanted to wear as I got older. Quality was a big part of that and becoming a more conscious consumer.”
Ms Austin said in many ways she had to relearn elements of building a successful business.
“We had well over 400 stores when we separated, so it was quite a different business as opposed to five stores, but it was fun and refreshing,” she said.
While some may say she’s pitting herself against her ex-husband in the competitive fashion world, Ms Austin said the Decjuba brand was different to Cotton On on many levels.
“Of course Cotton On does T-shirts and Decjuba does T-shirts, but our target market is different and I have a genuine desire to do something different,” she said. “That’s their space and they own it.”
Ms Austin admitted it could be a struggle to juggle family with work commitments, but Nigel lives close by and she is surrounded by supportive friends.
With two exceptionally wealthy and successful parents (Nigel featured last year on the BRW Rich List with an estimated personal fortune of $295 million), the children could have access to anything and everything they could ever want for. But Ms Austin said she and Nigel were conscious of raising happy, well-adjusted and grounded kids.
“They’re very exposed, not only by what we do at Decjuba, but with our own personal life around what we do philanthropically and that’s been an ongoing decision both Nigel and I made many years ago,” Ms Austin said.
Decjuba has a longstanding partnership with The Hunger Project, a not-forprofit organisation committed to the empowerment of women and ending hunger globally by 2030.
The Cotton On Foundation is dedicated to empowering youth globally. By working directly with communities in southern Uganda, South Africa, Thailand and Australia, it hopes to create 20,000 educational places by 2020.
“They’ve been very exposed to that, how we can impact that and what we can do to give back,” Ms Austin said.