The Fashion Dream (and the Reality Check)
In 2010, I co-founded a fashion label called Maaike. We launched our first collection at New Zealand Fashion Week, picked up nine stockists in our very first season, and the Instagrams looked brilliant.
Except… we hadn’t made it at all.
Behind the highlight reel was the stuff nobody in the creative world really talked about: pricing with thin margins, working bar shifts at night just to pay rent, and a bank manager who literally laughed at us when we asked for a loan.
On paper, we were killing it. In reality, we were financially flying blind.
The Number That Changed Everything
It was somewhere around season three or four. Em and I were staring at a spreadsheet trying to figure out where all the money was going. We were getting decent wholesale orders. The brand was growing. We were about to sign the lease on our first physical retail store.
And yet the bank account told a completely different story.
So I looked, really looked, at our wholesale margin.
Thirty percent.
We were wholesaling at a thirty percent margin. Basically giving clothes away to stockists while we carried all the design, production, sampling, and shipping costs. No wonder there was nothing left over. And we were about to take on an entirely new layer of costs with a retail store on top of that.
That was the moment it stopped being abstract. Numbers weren’t just boring admin. They were the difference between a business that survived and one that slowly bled out while looking great on Instagram.
Why Nobody Warned Us
The fashion world is full of talent, but when it comes to numbers? Crickets.
Everyone either kept their cards close to their chest, or they were just as lost as we were and too embarrassed to admit it. No one told us what healthy margins looked like, how much stock to hold, or how to forecast cashflow. So we guessed. And we guessed wrong, over and over, until we slowly figured it out ourselves.
The bar shifts. The sleepless nights. The ‘winging it’ instead of strategy. All of it was avoidable, if someone had just shown us the numbers earlier.
When Maaike Ended, and What Came Next
When Em and I made the decision to close Maaike, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do next.
Over 14 years, I’d watched so many brands come and go. Talented, passionate, creative people whose businesses didn’t survive, not because their work wasn’t good enough, but because no one had ever helped them get the business side right. I’d always been the one handling the financials and operations at Maaike. I understood this stuff, not from a textbook, but from the inside. From the sleepless nights. From the bar shifts. From the moment I discovered a 30% wholesale margin with a retail lease about to land on my desk.
And I thought: these founders don’t need another old white guy in a suit telling them what to do. They need someone who’s actually been through it.
That’s Waffle.
What’s Coming on This Blog
Waffle isn’t just one-on-one advisory. This blog is part of something bigger: a space where creative founders can actually learn the money stuff, in plain English, without shame.
Expect real stories (wins and disasters), practical tools you can use the same day, and honest takes on the numbers stuff that nobody in your industry is talking about. Things like:
👉 How to know if your pricing is actually working
👉 What your P&L is really telling you (and how to read it without crying)
👉 Why your business can look busy and still feel broke
If you’ve been waiting for someone to make the money side of your creative business feel less terrifying, you’re in the right place.
If You’re Here…
You’re probably running a creative business, working harder than you ever expected, and still wondering where all the money goes. Maybe you’ve been avoiding your bank account like it’s a horror movie. Maybe you’re doing okay but you know you could be doing better if only the finance side made more sense.
I can’t give you back the years I spent guessing. But I can make sure you don’t waste yours.
Subscribe to the Waffle newsletter and every month I’ll share practical, no-nonsense advice to help you get clearer on your numbers, no jargon, no fluff, no old white guys in suits.
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