The apparel manufacturing industry has been historically underserved by the vocational education and training (VET) system. Hanga-Aro-Rau is working alongside our Industry stakeholders to develop new and improved training opportunities and to promote career pathways into the sector.

It was a pleasure to sit down with Kim Holden, General Manager of Untouched World, to learn about her journey through the apparel and fashion industry, and the role that training will play in developing their future workforce.

“I’ve always liked fashion and sewing,” Kim says. “While I was in high school, I did my first year of trade certification on pattern drafting, and then I spent a year at Ara Polytechnic doing fashion design.” There was no clear training pathway into apparel manufacturing, however; it was through Work and Income New Zealand that Kim first got her foot in the door of the industry. “I started here at Untouched World [then Snowy Peak] in 1993 when I was 17 years old. I was employed as a button-hole machinist. After a couple of months, I moved to plain sewing, but it wasn’t for me, so I asked for the cleaning job. You could say I cleaned my way to the top.”

Kim spent the next 15 years learning every operation on the shop floor and taking advantage of each opportunity to learn. “I would clean, I would operate the factory shop on a pager system, and then when I finished my cleaning duties, I would go back into the factory and learn every process. During those years, I had three children. I would work at night cleaning and then sew for the factory shop at home during the day while I managed the kids.”

A passion for structure and procedure led Kim to streamline processes and work her way up through a number of roles within the business. “I came into a position in dispatch. Back then I didn’t even know how to use a computer, so I had to teach myself. I then became a Team Leader in the knitting room and worked my way up to Production Manager, then Operations Manager.”

Direct support and mentorship have been instrumental in Kim’s progression and have enabled her to thrive in her current role as General Manager. “I have no formal education, but our owner and CEO, Peri Drysdale, was a mentor to me and supported me through various leadership programmes where I learned to support different types of personalities. She saw something special in me that has allowed me to flourish. She instilled in me the idea of mā te huruhuru ka rere te manu – adorn the bird with features so it may soar.”

Kim believes in the importance of change, and she pushes her team to embrace all opportunities to learn new industry-relevant skills. “I’m very hands-on, and I don’t ask my staff to do anything I wouldn’t do. For me to understand what’s happening in the business and have the ability to change, I have to know how to do it myself. I learned every operation on the shop floor, which has served me really well because I can challenge staff and encourage them to consider a different solution. I love role-swapping. I’m a firm believer that people can get stale in their positions when they have been in them too long.”

There was no formal pathway available when Kim entered the industry, she says, a problem that persists to this day. “Training in apparel manufacturing in Canterbury is not accessible. There are quite a few young ones coming through now who want to be a garment engineer or a designer but don’t have those foundational skills. We employ on personality rather than training because we know we can teach them the fundamentals. Especially in the design area, we like to bring staff up through the business with support in behind them. Work-based learning is pretty important.”

The apparel workforce is aging, Kim says, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity for greater education and training pathways to bring young people into the industry. “I once had a high school student who came in for work experience and wanted to be a fashion designer, but she didn’t know how to sew as it had been removed from the school curriculum. You have to put that structure in behind people; otherwise, you’re setting them up to fail. If we lose training opportunities, there’s no growth in the business, no fresh blood or people willing to come through and learn. A strong VET system helps us, within our manufacturing environment, to support our workers, giving us the skillset we need to carry out production in different areas – whether it’s a sewing machinist or hand-finishing and detailing. We’re a New Zealand-made brand, so we have to support local staff with the skills they need to do the job.”