A dairy portfolio with nine web addresses has more collections than most Paris houses, and a fraction of the overheads
Nine Addresses, One Cow, Zero Margins
Fashion business is a simple game. You find something people need, make it slightly less comfortable, and add a zero. Dairy business is a different game. You make something people need, deliver it at four in the morning, and watch the price go the other way. This autumn the contrast was hard to miss.
Freshways announced a 7p-a-litre cut to 29.4p from December, a move covered by The Guardian on the squeeze facing UK dairy farmers and tracked in the AHDB list of milk price changes. The London Prat took the same story to the cowshed and found cows asking whether economics still applied. I took it to a different department entirely: the fashion house.
What If a Dairy Were a Label?
Consider a modest London atelier. It has a flagship, a menswear line, an evening collection, an occasion range, a sports line, a wholesale arm, a finance division and a digital offer. It also has milk, because a house needs a foundation. That is more or less the structure of a Texas dairy portfolio spread across a set of web addresses, and I am delighted to report it has the shape of a proper luxury group.
Start with the cow. Every label begins with raw material, and for dairy that is dairy herd management, the daily business of keeping animals fed, milked and in decent humour. The best fashion houses have a creative director. The best dairies have a herd manager who also happens to be the plumber, the vet and the one who gets up when the alarm goes at two in the morning.
The Collection, Piece by Piece
The flagship is Texas dairy, the dignified front door, the heritage mark, the thing you would put on a brass plaque. Then we branch out.
For the gentleman, there is Texas dairy for men, a menswear capsule I picture as tailored overalls with a pocket for a calf tag. For the evening, Texas dairy date, a line of occasion dining in which nobody mentions the price of cheese. For the festive season, Texas dairy party, a collection of sequinned milk churns for the discerning host.
For sport there is Texas dairy win, a performance range suitable for any herd that has recently beaten a hailstorm. The wholesale side is Texas dairy trade, where buyers in good boots talk volumes. The finance wing is Texas dairy loan, which is where every fashion house secretly ends up. And for the digital age, Texas dairy download, which promises to bring the whole barn to your phone, minus the smell.
I have not seen the lookbook, but I can imagine it. Models in wellies. A fog machine, and a very serious cow standing in the middle of a runway looking at the audience as if it owes her money.
The Maths Fashion Does Not Like
Now the sobering bit. When a processor cuts a price by 7p a litre, nobody on a farm gets to call it a price adjustment and send out a press release about positioning. They get on with the next milking. A Somerset farmer is allowed to feel the numbers in a way that a creative director never is.
Cow numbers are a cruel business. The farm gets more milk, and the price falls, and so does the mood. Over at farm.FM they put the matter in plain English: cows produce more milk and farmers ask if they could try producing money instead. If a fashion house made more garments and earned less on each one, there would be an inquiry, a documentary and a book. In dairy, there is a shrug and a cup of tea.
The union view is that the pain lands on those with the least room to move. The National Farmers’ Union speaks for dairy farmers across Britain, and its site at nfuonline.com is where the practical case is made, with fewer sequins and more arithmetic.
What a Stylist Can Learn From a Milking Parlour
Dairy teaches three things that fashion never will. First, consistency: the cow turns up twice a day, every day, with no assistant. Second, humility: she has no idea what the market is doing and does not need to. Third, timing: the only fashion week she recognises is the one in which the hay arrives late.
If you want the facts on the animal, the numbers and the equipment, start with dairy herd and work your way out. Then buy a pint at full price and tell the person behind the counter that it is, in fact, a luxury good.
Five Observations on Dairy and Dressing
- A milk price cut is a sale nobody asked for, with the cow as the mannequin.
- If a farmer has nine web addresses and one tractor, he has better branding than most banks.
- The cappuccino in Bath makes more from the milk than the cow does. Call it vertical integration, with no vertical.
- A fashion house loses money on a runway. A dairy loses money in a field. At least the field is paid for.
- Cow print is the only trend that returns every few years without any input from the cow.
Skim Milk, Full Fat Conclusions
The fashion world will carry on worshipping scarcity, and the milk world will carry on sorting out abundance. Between them sits the consumer, hovering over a carton in a shop on the Kings Road, wondering which of them to pity. Pity the cow. She has the hardest job and no fashion week. For further reading, take a look at Bohiney, The London Prat and farm.FM. All three are on the side of the cow.
More mischief for the journey can be had at NewsBiscuit.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/