Cotton On co-founder Tania Austin keen to accelerate growth at her new chain Decjuba

Caitlin Fitzsimmons Online editor

Cotton On co-founder Tania Austin keen to accelerate growth at her new chain Decjuba

Published 08 March 2014 00:01, Updated 08 March 2014 00:06

+font-fontprintEmail page

Tania Austin bought Decjuba because she’s not the kind of person who could spend her day “sitting around having coffee and cake”

Tania Austin made most of her $50 million fortune founding and building Cotton On with her ex-husband Nigel. When the marriage ended, he took full ownership of the business.

But Austin, ranked 25th on the 2014 Rich Women list, says she does not miss Cotton On.

“I’ve moved on from it,” Austin says. “It was an amazing part of my life, something we created and grew and I can look back on it and say that I’ve done that. But I’m not the sort of person who looks back.”

Austin could have taken the money and funded a nice life for herself and her three young children. Instead, in 2008, she bought fashion retailer Decjuba, then a chain of just six stores that Austin describes as “a bit run down at the time”.

“What I’ve done for work has never been about the money, it’s about the challenge of making something work and being true to myself,” Austin says. “I’m not really one of those people who could sit around not doing much with my day and doing coffee and cake.”

That craving for a challenge also led Austin to walk the Kokoda Track three years in a row, something she describes as a metaphor for life and business. “You put one foot in front of the other and you’ll always get there,” she says.

She is also heavily involved in a range of charities; she has recently returned from a week in India volunteering with the The Hunger Project, helping develop women’s leadership skills in rural areas.

Decjuba now has revenue of more than $20 million from 28 stores in Australia and New Zealand including an online shop. Austin is proud that she has developed the offering into a coherent range with a focus on nice fabrics and the premise of helping women look and feel “amazing” in any situation.

But she regards the growth as “a little slow”. “I’m a bit frustrated at the moment that we don’t have more stores,” Austin says. There are six in the pipeline for 2014 but Austin hopes it will be closer to 10, and there are plans to expand outside Victoria and NSW.

She decided to buy an existing chain because she thought the label was interesting but had “lost its way” and she had already built a brand from scratch and wanted to try something new.

Decjuba caters for an older and more sophisticated crowd than Cotton On, which is a fast-fashion youth brand. But Austin’s experience with Cotton On reveals itself behind the scene. For example, Cotton On is famous for controlling the factories that produce the product and Decjuba now uses that model too. Her experience also means she is able to make decisions quickly, develop a strong team and delegate to them.

Austin says Cotton On was not yet well established when she had her children and she faced the same juggle of every working mother. She took the children to work and on business trips when they were really little and picks them up from school every day now they are older.