new Billionaire: Retail Royalty

The fast-fashion emperor from Oz.

“I remember from 8 or 9 years old that I always wanted to be in retail,” Nigel Austin says. “My father was a figure I really looked up to and respected.” The elder Austin ran a clothing wholesale and import business in the family’s native Australia, and Nigel spent school holidays working at the firm. After a brief stint attending college he dropped out to start his own company.

“Good news and bad news,” he told his father. “The good news is that this retail thing is going really well. The bad news is college isn’t for me.”

Thirty years later, Austin’s Cotton On Group boasts 1,214 locations across Australia, New Zealand and Asia, and $1.5 billion in annual sales. (Austin, 47, owns 90% of the firm, a stake worth $1.3 billion.) The company is in America, too, with 143 of its fast-fashion stores. Its shops resemble a hybrid of Urban Outfitters, Old Navy and H&M and, like those competitors, sell staple items at modest prices.

Austin’s family connections in the garment trade gave him a leg up in the early days, says James Stewart, a retail expert at Ferrier Hodgson, an industry consulting firm: “The Austin family has a very, very deep history in direct sourcing. They got first-mover advantage.” Cotton On entered the U.S. in 2009 as e-commerce began to hurt traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.

“We are taking it slower than we normally would because we’re reading what’s going on,” says chief executive Peter Johnson.