Frontline / High fashion and dirty laundry in Fairlie
Meet a dynamic forward-thinking couple who have formed successful businesses around the desire to achieve a solution when it comes to the
elusive juggle of work, life and kids.
Pulling into the small township of Fairlie for a muchneeded early morning coffee proves to be an upbeat hit. Town is humming with parents on school drop-off, tradies picking up lunch and lycra-clad out-of-towners stocking up on their way to mountain biking adventures. The vibe is relaxed, dynamic, rural and metropolitan – a lively and unlikely combo that extends beyond the doors of the bakery, across the courtyard and into the on-trend clothing store that is The Little Red Fox.
A workshop and a bakehouse in days gone by, The Little Red Fox is as much about styling a modish interior as it is about clothing. With its distinctive corrugated iron exterior and the retention of light industrial elements inside, it’s a fun and welcoming space, one that is respectful of its rural location while attracting progressive and bang-on fashion.
When one meets the owner, Olivia O’Sullivan, it’s easy to see how her shop achieves this blend of rural meets city. In fact, Olivia and her store may well be tandem parallels of each other. Bubbling with effervescent enthusiasm, Olivia is stylishly chic, driven, committed and passionate about her town and her business. Throw in Chris O’Sullivan, owner of Washdyke’s Queen Bee Laundromat, and the energy levels ramp up even higher. Equally charming and affable, Chris is the other half of this dynamic husband and wife team who are taking the cut-throat world of fashion and laundry head-on.
Formerly a hairdresser and the owner of a salon in Timaru, Olivia has always been interested in fashion. However, starting a family placed her in a problematic position where she felt ‘a bit full-on juggling with clients’. While she maintained a part-time presence at her salon with her daughter Florence (six) and son Darcy (four), Olivia made the decision to sell the business before her youngest child, Tilly (three) was born. Three children under the age of four might be enough to keep most young mums busy, but it didn’t take long for this energetic mother to start getting itchy feet. In fact, by the time Tilly was just three months old, Olivia was back working on Saturdays doing wedding hair.
Knowing Olivia and Chris ‘wanted a business that worked with the kids’, it was a pie from the infamous Fairlie Bakehouse that set the wheels in motion towards the opening of The Little Red Fox. Eating out the front of the Bakehouse was the defining moment when Olivia and Chris decided ‘Right, let’s jump on in and do it.’ Today, The Little Red Fox has been successfully operating for over two and a half years, but behind the scenes it has been a story of hard work, risk and the occasional setback, the first coming when Olivia didn’t get her first choice of shop location. With her heart set on street frontage, early ideas were thwarted on discovering the shop she had in mind had just been sold. Instead, Olivia was shown a workshop out the back, a setting she is now
delighted with. Not only is the architecture distinctive, but two halves to the shop gave her the opportunity to expand her business while ‘amazing’ landlords have fully supported her interior style vision.
However, choosing a site may well have been the easy bit. Experienced in business, Olivia admits starting an independent fashion store ‘was really foreign’, particularly stocking her shop. With robust ideas about the labels and brands she wanted to supply her customers, early knock-backs proved to be a hard lesson as she discovered there were brands who wouldn’t sell to The Little Red Fox, her rural location deemed too close to other South Canterbury-based stockists.
Undeterred, Olivia set her sights on creating a point of difference. Passionate about the fashion industry, she looked further afield, focusing on brands that other shops didn’t have. These days, Olivia offers labels from New Zealand, Australia, USA and Europe. As she says, ‘It’s about never giving up. When you have a knock-back you’ve got to charge through and get back up.’
It’s also the personal touch that places The Little Red Fox in such good stead. While Olivia is front-of-house just two days a week, she is very much at the helm of the business, working tirelessly behind the scenes to create memorable shopping experiences for her customers and sharing her passion with them. Her online presence is remarkable. There is no offloading social media and online shopping for Olivia. Instead, she does it all. ‘I like, I comment, I answer every single thing,’ she says of the shop’s online strategy, her belief and her enthusiasm for her business clearly evident. ‘It comes down to our core values and my passion for the industry. I’m all or nothing.’ Olivia has even been known to bounce customer babies on her hip while the mother shops. ‘I know how hard it is for a mum to try something on. We’re very relaxed, have the room and I’m used to kids. I have a high tolerance,’ she laughs, adding that her own cherubs are super active.
Operating seven days a week, both instore and online, The Little Red Fox could be an all-consuming affair. However, Olivia is adamant the O’Sullivans need a strong life-work balance so weekends are all about family, friends and fun.
The Fairlie vibe is relaxed, dynamic, rural and metropolitan.
Olivia and Chris both grew up in Fairlie but with Olivia schooled locally and Chris attending boarding school in Christchurch, their paths didn’t cross for a long time. Now they’re back in their hometown after stints overseas and they love everything that Fairlie offers – closeness to extended family, Lake Opuha, Dobson ski field and ‘a really awesome group of friends’.
Equally passionate about his own business, Queen Bee Laundry, Chris proves the O’Sullivans are a dynamic duo who are working hard to build thriving twin businesses. On the surface, Chris’s shift from dairy farming and as a technical field rep for Farmlands may seem a world away from dirty washing. However, he’s adamant the principals of repping and building a successful commercial laundry are the same. ‘It’s about building good service and trust,’ he says. ‘It’s about being passionate about what you do.’
It’s also about due diligence and entrepreneurial courage. What started as a light bulb moment took six months of background work before Chris took the plunge and invested in opening a commercial laundry, the only one in South Canterbury. Named for his late mother, Bronwyn, Queen Bee required substantial output just to open the doors – and that was before he’d even confirmed customers. He laughs about it now but setting up the business cost in excess of $500,000. ‘That was the scariest part – a massive outlay and not really knowing what you’re getting into. Start-up business is scary but I love risk.’
With his five 100 kg washing machines, two 45 kg machines, two 34 kg machines, two 77 kg dryers, two 66 kg dryers and a press worth more than $250,000, Chris needed to be willing to take a punt. Quietly confident about the potential for a commercial laundry, Chris had a strong feeling about it. ‘Sometimes going with your gut instinct is important.’
However, six months into it and even Chris, seemingly eternally optimistic, found himself wondering ‘what the hell I’d got myself into’ as he grappled to gain customers. Working tirelessly to build a client base, business was psychologically tough, the first half of 2018 being the period he describes as ‘pretty gruelling’. He credits his success to a change in mindset, breaking everything down, working with a business coach and tweaking all the little things. For Chris, it’s a case
Olivia is adamant the O’Sullivans need a strong life-work balance so weekends are all about family, friends and fun.
of ‘no matter what, you’ve got to stay positive’. For him, this meant shifting his philosophy to ‘How are we going to get bigger’, not ‘How are we going to stay afloat’.
Now into his second year of the laundry business, Chris says, ‘It’s been worth the sweat and tears.’ As he develops plans for expansion, the three P’s of sustainability – planet, profit and people – are clearly on his radar. Operating with biodegradable chemicals and water-efficient machines, Chris has recently racked and vented an insulated container for air drying and plans are in place for increased automation, including an automated towel folder and a larger press. The sheer volume of washing his team puts through the laundry on a daily basis is staggering – 1500 sheets, 400 towels and thousands of pillow slips. A new towel folder and a larger press will increase this capacity to a phenomenal 600 towels per hour and up to 500 pressed sheets per hour. On top of that are the commercial overalls he launders, his delivery service throughout South Canterbury and Tekapo, linen rental and a drop-off point from the O’Sullivans’ front room at home for Fairlie’s booming bach rental trade.
For the uninitiated, Chris’s numbers seem huge. However, he asserts he’s ‘not big corporate, we’re more personal’, and places greater significance on good relationships and personality. As with Olivia, Chris firmly believes you’ve got to be passionate about what you do and you’ve got to enjoy it.
Supportive of each other, it’s clear Olivia and Chris are each other’s biggest cheerleaders and inspiration. They rarely cross into the other’s business world, but what they do share is a passion for life, work, each other and their three children, proving that hard work, a balanced lifestyle, a humble attitude and the courage to take an educated risk can be a chance worth taking.
Operating with biodegradable chemicals and water-efficient machines, Chris has recently installed an insulated container for air drying.