By Emma Gleason

Copyright thespinoff

Does a fashion brand need lots of staff and an Auckland store to be successful? Manaaki suggests not.

Kat Tua’s spent nearly three years building her brand Manaaki, benefiting from a leg up from one of the world’s most prominent international menswear retailers. Now (finally, for her fans) she’s opened a retail spot in Aotearoa. “I knew I wanted to have a store here, or a presence here,” she says. She’d been looking at stockists and found it hard to find a fit for her brand as the number of dedicated menswear boutiques in Aotearoa is scant, . “It was time to have an actual shop, where people can try on and get a sense of the brand.” Plus, Tua wants to get a clearer picture of her clientele, what they’re looking for. “The main thing for me is just trying to build a sense of community here – building those relationships, getting that customer database.”

A Manaaki store hadn’t been on her radar – she’d been focusing on wholesaling – but the opportunity arose to look at spaces in Auckland CBD, and that plan was “fully going ahead”… until it wasn’t. Tua changed tack, securing a spot in Matakana (where she lives) over an hour’s drive away from the sprawling malls, chain stores and luxury flagships of Tāmaki Makaurau. Situated to be a destination store, it opened last weekend, two kilometres from the village centre on the humming corner of Matakana and Sharpe Road, right next to one of the region’s busiest cafes.

She enlisted Studio Sio’s Shanta Trueswich, whose portfolio includes the renovation of Hotel Chelsea (yes, really). Going from the Big Apple to Matakana was a bit of a shift. “It’s so good to be able to come back,” says Trueswich, who still works a lot in New York. “To be able to do something that’s so Aotearoa is really a gift.”

The interior’s a departure too, compared to the prevailing simplicity of shop fitouts. “I wanted something earthy, lots of wood, plants,” says Tua. They used New Zealand-made Alto Paints’ Toi Māori Aotearoa collection. You’ll notice Muna, based on pale pounamu, painted on wood panelling – detailing added to the space’s birch plywood walls. It’s decorated with images from various campaigns, hung in vintage frames, alongside some of Tua’s own pictures. There are dolls from the 1970s, sourced from her aunty’s “huge” collection, and other family taonga adorning the walls and shelves.

And the clothes? Nostalgic prints and characterful denim.

Manaaki’s still relatively young, launched three years ago. “I was living in Sydney and had just finished up working for brands after over a decade as an in-house designer,” remembers Tua. “Around then, I decided to start a menswear brand. The goal was to start an online store, build slowly and have a chill life designing and uber driving on the side… until I won the Mr Porter Futures mentorship in 2021.”

A sibling site to luxury e-tailer Net-A-Porter, the menswear-focused Mr Porter carries legacy brands like Gucci and Saint Laurent alongside zeitgeist-y labels like Bode and Aimé Leon Dore. Its Futures programme was designed to nurture emerging talent. Tua was among a handful of designers selected from over 1,000 applicants. Over a “good, solid 18 months of intense mentoring”, the mentees worked closely with the company’s teams. The branding department was pivotal in helping product-focused Tua find the concept, name and essence of what she was doing. “It turned out the brand was all there, in me; they just unlocked it. That’s how Manaaki was created.”

Was it hard starting a label? “No way – I had a massive head start with an incredible team of experts championing me. I remember early in the mentorship, one of my meetings with the MRP buyers being cancelled because they were ‘in a meeting with Celine’. That was surreal. Knowing they worked with these incredible brands – and me.” That’s not to say there wasn’t imposter syndrome, especially after feeling like a “rundown single mum” for ages, but the whirlwind experience of being “plucked from nothing” and given a leg-up helped equip Tua for the next chapter. “That was a real mind shift. But it prepped me so well and set me up for what came next.”

As a trained designer, the learning curve was huge. “I don’t necessarily know much about wholesale sales or order fulfilment from an international distribution perspective,” she says. “I’m not just shipping to a boutique in Australia, I’m shipping to three huge warehouses in three different continents.” That first fulfilment process took a whole year.

Manaaki launched in London first, in 2022, then Sydney, and it didn’t take long for people back home to take notice. There were profiles in Fashion Quarterly, RNZ, The Post and Viva – which put her bespoke denim suit on a cover.

The design was political. She’s among a cohort of designers forwarding Māori identity and kaupapa in their work – names like Kiri Nathan, Campbell Luke, Aorangi Kora and Vince Ropitini. “I think Manaaki resonates globally because people connect with authenticity. The kaupapa is rooted in Māori culture, but the themes – identity, belonging, community – are universal. International audiences may not understand all the nuances, but they respect that it comes from a real place. Māori culture itself is something people find beautiful and fascinating overseas.”

Defining the label in this context hasn’t always been met with applause. “Ironically, I’ve faced more challenges here in Aotearoa,” she says. “I’ve had complaints about headlines, and pushback against calling myself a Māori designer with a Māori brand – with people suggesting I say ‘Kiwi designer’ instead, or avoid mentioning being Māori altogether.

“Coming back home and experiencing that was shocking, and I’ve explored those themes a lot in my collections. So, the question really is: do people even understand the kaupapa here?”

The Futures incubator lasted a year, and when the mentorship stopped (though the retailer continued to stock the brand), reality hit. “Suddenly you’re on your own, managing a global account from zero.” It took a year to figure out the shipping and logistics. “Manaaki is just me – no staff, one wholesale account (Mr Porter), with new accounts in the works. I have no outside investors. Day to day, I run the business fulltime, supported by a small, contracted team for fittings, shoots and events.”

While international wholesale is “really hard”, looking to bigger regions can transform a small business. “Sometimes just one strong store is all you need,” Tua explains. “The market here in Aotearoa is small; it’s our population which can bring challenges. There are obstacles of course with expanding overseas, but if you can navigate them, it can bring more stability.”

Fashion’s an industry built on hype, aspiration and traditional successes, like expansion. “Something that’s surprised me in Aotearoa is the expectation that I should grow quickly or be bigger than I am. To grow fast, you need some serious money behind you. I think there’s room for more education around the realities of running an independent fashion brand – we face the same challenges as any small business.”

It’s still early days, too. “When I talk to mentors and buyers overseas, they seem to get it more. They’ll say: ‘You’re only 2.5 years in, that’s nothing,” she says. “Four years ago, I was living in a rent-controlled apartment and driving an Uber. I’m really proud of how far I’ve come.”

The new store is cause for a special Matakana capsule (two caps and three T-shirts) and an evolution of Tua’s schedule. “I’ll be working in the shop most of the time,” she says, and is looking forward to getting to know people after years of designing in isolation. “Dressing guys and having chats, I miss that.”