Two Kiwi farm kids who had no interest in farming instead created the Merino clothing brand Mons Royale and showcased it to the world.
Born from the mountains of New Zealand and founded by Hamish and Hannah Acland in 2009, 15 years of Mons Royale has grown into a global success story.
Both from high country farms – Hamish grew up on Mt Somers Station in the foothills of Mid Canterbury, and Hannah (née Aubrey) hailed from Dalrachney Station near Wānaka – the couple knew there was potential to do something special with NZ Merino wool.
They pioneered Merino in action-sports apparel, creating garments that provide superior warmth, breathability, and durability.
It all started from a somewhat ambiguous email subject line.
Acland grew up in an entrepreneurial family learning how to see things differently, identifying opportunities and adding value.
His grandfather Sir Jack Acland farmed Mt Peel Station and was a former chair of the NZ Wool Board and vice-president of the International Wool Secretariat.
His father Mark, with Sir Tim Wallis, pioneered the NZ farmed deer industry and with his brother John introduced flexible cattle ear tags to NZ, and later the Lynn River gloves.
“My family has played a big part. Looking back I grew up in an entrepreneurial environment.
“I come from that sort of family where you are always looking at designing a better way, solving a problem.
“When I first met Hannah, I asked her to give me her opinion of Mons.”
The email subject line was “an anatomy of an idea”.
“Her feedback was quite brutal.”
Said Hannah: “I kind of dissected the anatomy of an idea.”
From that dissection the thread was woven.
“Essentially it was two Kiwi farm kids not interested in farming, ended up husband-and-wife business partners creating Merino clothing brand Mons Royale.
“There were very strong links: wool, farming, sports, design to connect the dots and have a real positive impact.
“Mons sits at the intersection of farming and a customer base; it was our job to create connection and demand.
“Starting a brand was quite hard. Hannah brought style and energy that balanced the sporting person I was.”
Hamish was a professional freeride skier, ranked fifth globally in 2005.
“As professional skier I travelled the world for 10 years living out of ski bag, and I noticed that I wouldn’t wear the Merino base layer that I had at the time other than on the mountain.
“The outdoor industry was all about making everything look like it was for climbing Everest.
“This led to the idea of creating a brand that designed technical products that could be worn as easily on the mountain as off. That’s where the idea of Mons came from.”
Acland identified a gap in the market for stylish and functional base layers for extreme sportswear.
“The job was to replace the cotton T and synthetics to something that could be worn for days and not need washing.
“I wrote what you might call a blueprint and how the brand would develop over the first years, focusing on the gap in the market and how to differentiate itself against what was an established category.”
Come the end of 2008 Acland developed samples and sold them to NZ retailers.
It was then he met his wife to be, who was just back from a three-year stint in New York at an idea-led innovation company.
From the anatomy of an idea, Mons Royale was born in 2009 and is now stocked in more than 1000 stores globally.
Why the name? “Mons” is Latin for mountains “and because we hold the mountains supreme, we treat them like royalty”, hence Mons Royale, representing the culture and the energy of the mountains, and made from premium-quality NZ Merino wool.
The brand was designed to be global from the start, but the couple’s first trip to ISPO, the world’s largest trade fair, in that first year was a “big failure. We realised the original translation wasn’t quite right.
“We returned home, stalled production and Hannah re-designed all of the graphics and identity in a week.”
Hamish’s contacts from his skiing career were key to targeting some of the world’s best athletes.
“Another key part of sales was that the outdoor and snow industry was extremely male dominated.”
Mons targeted women. More than 50% of its sales were to women, half its staff were women, and they made clothing women wanted to wear.
“A lot of brands missed that.”
They also connected with their fans year-round in ski towns. Dirt was the new snow with the rise of mountain biking, which had become another target market.
In 2009 Mons Royale shipped its first orders overseas and by the next ISPO trade show “we were on a roll”.
A flagship Mons Royale retail store opened last month as part of the 15-year anniversary celebrations. It’s in Wānaka, where the couple live with their young family, Ted, 10 and Frankie, 7.
Mons Royale has four other retail outlets in NZ, two in Queenstown and two in Christchurch.
Globally Mons Royale has a base in Innsbruck, Austria and Squamish, near the Canadian ski resort town of Whistler.
“We are based with teams in mountain towns; mega cities are not us.”
Hannah continues to design all the clothing while Hamish runs the business.
The business is the largest NZ company buying fine wool through contract with the NZ Merino company.
“We are still buying from some of the same farmers we bought from on Day 1.”
Future plans for the business include scaling up the impact of wool through innovative constructions and natural fibre blends such as hemp.
Learning the retail game in NZ is something the couple have both enjoyed as they look forward to now taking that overseas.
While tiny in scale on the global stage, commitment to succeeding globally has paid off.
“We have probably flown under the radar here in NZ but we wanted to put our heads down, do the work and let the brand do the talking.
“To succeed globally a brand needed to stand for something and for Mons it has been its distinctiveness, energy and performance.
“There’re challenges out there, but it’s about navigating them. One of the challenges is the willingness to take risks,” Hamish said.
“We are positive there is lots more global demand for natural fibres as the world wakes up.
“There are some big opportunities. Initially our focus was to get scale and defend ability, but we have shifted now to profitability and working within our boundaries.
“We work with multiple partners; we have a track record and trust, and we are a nice size to have those conversations in R&D showing potential for the future.”
When the family are not working or skiing, they like to go mountain biking, hiking and camping.
“We often head to Hannah’s family in the Lindis Pass where the kids, well, all of us, do enjoy time out on the farm.”
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