and how you got the business off the ground during those early stages? Matt Jensen: It was a difficult market environment when we launched back in September 2009, given it was the back end of the GFC. But I can’t remember it being too challenging. I was just so focused on getting M.J. Bale off the ground, I probably had blinkers on. At the time, I had spent a year consulting to Thom Browne in New York and my wife was pregnant with our fourth child, so I was busy working day and night. It was a wonderful time, actually. I had a dream of sorts to create world-class clothing from homegrown natural fibres, in particular, Australian Merino wool. Being the son of a wool grower, I had always had this vision to bring a menswear brand closer to the farm gate, so it all felt like a relatively natural evolution. I was lucky to have a great group of investors, led by my old school friend, Matt Rogers, and a very understanding and supportive wife, Louise. We had four kids under the age of 8, so those early days were arguably tougher on Louise.  IR: Can you discuss how M.J. Bale has changed over the years, and how the business stands out in a competitive menswear market? How is it performing now? MJ: We have a saying internally at M.J. Bale that goes something like, ‘Change everything to change nothing.’ It’s a quote from The Leopard, the novel by Giuseppe di Tommaso, and it just reminds us of the need to constantly evolve to stay relevant to both the market and our customer. As you scale a business, it is important to create new products, categories and markets while maintaining healthy systems, processes and controls – this is to ensure things are (hopefully) kept in steady equilibrium. There are a lot of things that have changed over the years that have nothing to do with customer sentiment but are important to us, like going carbon neutral and being involved in revegetation and biodiversity preservation efforts at our wool partner farm, Kingston in Tasmania. Some things, however, never change, and those are our brand pillars, which revolve around concepts of courage, integrity and passion. We developed those pillars when we launched the business and they haven’t changed in 14 years. I like to think of the pillars as the foundation of our house. Everyone in the company knows them and we use them to keep each other on track. IR: How do you juggle the dual function of director and head designer? What most excites you about designing for M.J. Bale, and how has your design work changed over the years? MJ: I usually try to carve out a couple days each week with the design team and tend to spend most nights doing the more creative stuff, when I’m more relaxed. Travelling – I like to travel a lot for work and with the family, and this also helps with fresh perspectives. I’m lucky that I’ve been mostly working with the same Italian and Japanese weavers/makers for about two decades now, so we tend to bounce off each other and have a sound mutual understanding of creating products with integrity. I think what excites me most about the design process is being able to anticipate a customer need then match that with what I see happening in the market. As mentioned, we’ve accelerated our casual offerings over the years, whereas in the past I was almost exclusively focused on tailoring, it’s now a 50-50 split between designing tailoring and casual. Category extensions into more lifestyle products is a super interesting space we are giving more time and attention to. The great thing about this industry is that it’s truly at the intersection between centuries-old industrial processes and cutting-edge new technologies, and the consumer tells you very quickly if they agree with you or not. I am CEO of the business and also lead the design team; yes, it makes for a very full schedule. However, there is nothing quite like being ‘hands-on’ in these businesses. All the greats of menswear, like the Zegnas, Paul Smiths, Loro Pianas, Nikes, Monclers, Brunello Cucinellis, have always had strong leaders that were very engaged in their businesses. In contrast, the number of brands that have lost sight of great product and lost their relevance, then failed, is significant. IR: M.J. Bale has long held a big focus on working with athletes – having worked with Australian cricketers and The Socceroos and now entering a partnership with Rugby Australia. Can you discuss what these partnerships add to the business, and do you think people are inspired by what athletes are wearing? MJ: When we started M.J. Bale, we knew the Australian male had a totally different lifestyle and clothing requirements than, say, the UK customer. The weather here in Australia meant fabrics needed to be lighter and jackets needed to be more deconstructed, considering the average Aussie guy’s active lifestyle and athletic body shape. Seeing our tailoring on these professional athletes is really the manifestation of that. It brings me a lot of pleasure to see our Wallabies, Australian Test cricketers and Socceroos grace the world stage looking the part – we think of it as our own sartorial World Cup. Additionally, provenance and performance are key attributes of our tailoring proposition and I think these partners epitomise both perfectly. Are people inspired by what athletes wear? I’m not sure, I think everyone is different, but certainly when you have an athlete who is well-dressed and has strong, positive personal values, it attracts a like-minded audience. IR: In 2021, M.J. Bale became Australia’s first carbon-neutral fashion brand. What role does sustainability play in the brand’s identity, and can you discuss the process leading to achieving this status? Why do you think M.J. Bale was the first Australian fashion brand to become carbon-neutral? MJ: I can’t speak on behalf of other brands. I only know that for us, doing nothing wasn’t an option. You have to remember I made the decision to take our business completely carbon neutral, during the bushfires of January 2020. Our wool growers had gone through a horrific drought for years, and now some of their farms, particularly those in New England, NSW, were filled day-in, day-out with smoke because of nearby bushfires. It was heartbreaking to see.  We did a carbon footprint scoping study on our wool suits just to understand what our environmental impact was and when we got the results back we decided to take all our products and our entire organisation carbon neutral. It is not a perfect system, offsetting your footprint, but at the time it was the only option. Sustainability, or responsibility, is ingrained in everything we do today, and we are trying to be part of the solution, whilst acknowledging there is a long way to go and that we are not perfect.  IR: How is M.J. Bale continuing to cut emissions, and what opportunities and challenges does the brand face in doing so? What are the brand’s plans in this space moving forward? MJ: The number one source of emissions for our wool suits is the production of Merino wool, from sheep methane emissions, so we targeted this one first. Working with Tasmanian seaweed producer Sea Forest, we pioneered a world-first methane-reduced wool at our partner, Kingston farm. We’re now onto our third trial over three years, and have upscaled the project, including making hand-knitted sweaters from the wool entirely in regional Australia, and using carbon-free transport, sailing it over the Bass Strait and pedalling it through the countryside. Additionally, in January last year, we became renewable energy-powered across our entire store network and head office. In our supply chain, many of our partners have embraced emission reduction targets. We ask them to do this, as part of continuing business or when onboarding a new supplier, and it was pleasing to see that our carbon intensity reduced 20 per cent from our baseline year (2020) to 2022. B Corp is arguably one of the most rigorous and complete systems for measuring and ingraining sustainable business practices into an organisation, and in addition to being Climate Active certified, we hope to become B Corp-certified in the coming months. Finally, we have joined as a member of the United Nations Global Compact Network for sustainable business development and will also be working with them to further our progress in this space. IR: Can you discuss M.J. Bale’s recent digital transformation? How is the business investing in its omnichannel offering and using technology to enhance its production efficiency? Is the brand using AI in any capacity? MJ: As a team, two years ago, we were crazy enough to take on, and ingrain, three large digital projects: a new e-commerce platform, a suite of Salesforce products and, most importantly, our MJB Members program, where we aim to reward our loyal clientele in the best possible way. It has been a huge undertaking and it’s an immense credit to our team that they’ve been able to bring it all to life while still trading the business in extremely volatile retail conditions. We are exploring various AI projects around digital user experience, inventory management and automating regular business processes. It’s a really exciting space; we absolutely do have ambition for it to enhance our user experience and improve the efficiency of our team when taking care of our customers.  IR: Can you discuss how M.J. Bale is managing current cost-of-living pressures, and how it continues to stay on top of evolving trends and consumer preferences?  MJ: Everyone throughout the world is experiencing cost-of-living pressures in one form or another. As a result, we aim to stay as relevant as possible to our customer’s needs, in addition to driving efficiency in the business so that we can continue to grow and realise our ambitions. Value proposition, at all ends of the pricing scale, is going to become hugely important in a world where the cost of capital is higher and consumers have (almost) limitless alternatives. IR: Can you discuss MJ Bale’s strategic and expansion plans in the coming years? Are there plans to expand into other markets in the years ahead? MJ: Creating a sophisticated house of brands in the Australian market is something that our Chair, David Briskin, and I have discussed many times over the years. Given we have a world-class operational infrastructure to plug into and a group of well-capitalised investors, we see this as a logical next step in the business. We are actively looking for brands to partner with or acquire. In terms of the M.J. Bale distribution strategy, the future of retail is clearly omnichannel, servicing customers wherever they find it most convenient. As a result, we’ve made significant investments in technology, in addition to building out an 80-plus store network around the country, including concessions in both David Jones and Myer. This footprint and market penetration mean we have reasonable scale, and that is exciting to leverage. On the product side of things, I’ve been asked so many times about other brand extensions to leverage our design capabilities, such as lifestyle products – we have something in the pipeline, watch this space – womenswear or homewares and we have some cool ideas to explore and develop. Regarding overseas, it’s always alluring, but we acknowledge it requires proper investment and capability ‘on the ground’. We have received overseas interest in distributing the brand globally, and we are exploring some of those opportunities without being in a rush to do them. The brand has international legs, it’s just important to get the timing and execution of the strategy correct. For now, we are distributing internationally via mjbale.com and will improve that offering with a dedicated northern hemisphere site in 2024. IR: How do you see trends in menswear fashion changing, and what innovations are you anticipating in this space? MJ: Today’s hybrid lifestyle – with guys experiencing a more fluid relationship between home life, special occasions and work – means they’re looking for soft, relaxed and comfortable clothing that provides greater utility. Of course, sustainability is important for all of us. We want to continue to do more in this space and try to leave the world in better shape for future generations.