Amid the likelihood of a global recession, Silkbody was forecasting a repeat, or similar, turnover of $1.5 million for the financial year and production growth beyond 30% to meet rising demand, managing director and designer Emily Cooper said of the five-person Dunedin-based company.
Ms Cooper has spent the past two years looking for a distributor in Germany and last month signed a deal which will put the first stock in German stores by February next year for the northern hemisphere 2009 spring/summer season.
"Germany is a huge market and very important to us.
In many respects it's the gateway to Europe and we expect a flow-on [elsewhere] from there," she said. During the past six and a-half years, Ms Cooper and father David have built up the Silkbody brand, with the garments manufactured at factories in China, imported to New Zealand and then distributed overseas.
At present, Silkbody is sold in more than 60 New Zealand stores, 60 in the United Kingdom and 15 in Australia, with distribution arranged in Belgium (also covering the Netherlands and Denmark), Sweden, Chile, Ireland and Iceland, while Taiwan could have a distributor by next year.
The United States was not part of the Silkbody's focus, she said.
Ms Cooper was aware that this week Germany joined New Zealand in formally going into recession, recording two consecutive quarters of negative growth, but she had yet to see many signs of recession, but was nevertheless taking a "sensible and cautious" approach.
"The focus in the German outdoor market at the moment is sustainability, so it's no surprise that retailers and consumers are looking for exciting new products that fit these criteria," she said.
In the UK and Germany the outdoor/recreation apparel market did not appear to have been hit by the downturn yet, but the reason why was yet to become obvious, she said.
The overall outdoor clothing sales sector in Germany alone was worth around 840 million ($NZ1.9 billion) per year, she said.
Silkbody is "naturally hedged" against the volatility of the New Zealand dollar in that its margins improve markedly on exports when the New Zealand dollar is low, while it suffers as an importer when the dollar is high.
"Timing of payments in foreign exchange have a lot to do with it."
