Peter Alexander is Australia’s pyjama king. But life wasn’t always soft and cuddly for the man who had to overcome dyslexia, a lack of knowledge of both the fashion and business area’s, and financial limitations, to establish himself in the fashion industry in the mid-1980s. His Melbourne – based company, Peter Alexander Sleepwear, has now evolved into one of Australia's most successful multichannel retailers.

I am dyslexic. It was a real learning disability and, as a consequence, I didn’t do well at school. I still can’t spell very well and my handwriting is terrible. I struggled dramatically through my school years and did remedial classes to help. I knew I was intelligent; I just didn’t fit into the school system. I believed it was just a matter of finding my niche.

I had no background in fashion. No one in my family was involved in fashion. I completed my HSC (Higher School Certificate) and didn’t do any tertiary study. In 1982-83, I worked in a nightclub and then I got a part-time job as a sales assistant at Sportsgirl. As soon as I worked there, I enjoyed the energy, the creativity, the marketing and fashion. Sportsgirl trained me in visual merchandising. I learnt a lot about marketing and fashion, but nothing about manufacturing – because everything was manufactured overseas – and nothing about business. With that knowledge, I decided I wanted to do something in fashion, despite the fact I had no real skills.

I had an idea – pyjamas. I remembered buying a pair in Hong Kong – even though I didn’t wear pyjamas. There had been something very appealing about this particular pair. They were reminiscent of my younger days when I was seven, eight, nine years old and there was something comforting about them. They were plain with little spots and they came in a little bag; there was something very personal and familiar about them. I also remembered spending quite a lot of money on them. I thought, “If I bought those pyjamas, maybe I can get other people to buy them.”

I did my research. I looked around and realised that ladies’ sleepwear departments stocked two extremes: the very pure, virginal, Little House on the Prairie – type pyjamas and the very sexy, saucy, femme fatale pyjamas. There was no middle ground whatsoever, so I immediately saw an opportunity, a gap in the market. Calvin Klein hadn’t even started a sleepwear range at that point.
I couldn’t sew on a button or cut a pattern, but I could see a market waiting to be explored.
I asked the girls I worked with at Sportsgirl, who were my age – about 22 to 23 – what they wore to bed. They said:” We go to the men’s department and buy men’s pyjamas because we want something a bit different.” That sold me on the concept of doing man-style pyjamas in fun, feminine fabrics.

A friend was pivotal in getting me started. She was in the fashion industry. I told her my idea and asked if she could help me find a pattern-maker and some fabric. We looked in the Yellow Pages and found a pattern maker. I took the pyjamas that I’d bought in Hong Kong and got the pattern made from that and then she took me to see fabric wholesalers. I bought five metres of this, five metres of that. We went to a factory and said: “We just want to get a sample run done; we’ll order thousands in the future.” That was a bit presumptuous because we didn’t even have orders at that point, but we got the samples made. I then went around to the stores and tried to sell the pyjamas.

Business acumen is more important than fashion knowledge. I always say that if I could start over again, I wouldn’t do a fashion course; I’d do a business course. Half the struggle is getting your clothes into the shops, the other half is managing the business. I would have liked to have known about figures and cash flow. You can be a really skilled merchandiser, marketer or fashion designer, but if you don’t have a business brain, you’re stuffed – and vice versa.

I started small, but I thought big. I started working from the dining room of my mother’s house. The garage was my warehouse. We had ‘call waiting’ on our telephone, which was our big expense at the time. I just chugged along like that for the first few years, turning over about $75,000 by the fourth year. I learnt about business on the job. My business survived simply because I kept my overheads low and my idea simple. If I’d moved into an office and employed staff, I wouldn’t have made it – my business would have crumpled.

I pretended I was three different people on the telephone because I wanted to give the perception that my company was bigger and better than it actually was. I was Matt the customer service guy, I was Jim in the stockroom and I was Peter Alexander. I couldn’t afford to employ people, so I would put on different voices on the phone. I used to do everything, including packing the pyjamas. I know my business from the ground up. I worked really hard, learnt on the job and became well established – my pyjamas were being sold in the major department stores including Myer and David Jones.

I used my own name as the company name; it was a conscious decision. There wasn’t such a thing as a sleepwear designer back then. Rather than the name I was originally going to use, Slumber Down Under, I wanted designer appeal. It worked because magazines picked up on it and it was a lot easier to get an editorial on me, a designer, than it was on pyjamas. I promoted myself and my name. Slumber Down Under would not have received that press, so my marketing brain came in very handy. Foremost, I’m a marketer/merchandiser, second a businessman and third a fashion designer, as you don’t have to change pyjamas too much each season.

I tried to attract media attention. That kind of publicity is important to any designer. I tried to create stories for newspapers and magazines by using the odd gimmick. I wasn’t at all afraid to be controversial or confrontational when it came to my product.

I had a disaster about six years into my business. A department store had ordered 2000 pairs of pyjamas, I’d paid for them and they were on a boat from China to Australia. Then the store cancelled its order at the last minute. My mum’s house was mortgaged and I owed $50,000 to the bank. I had all this stock I had to move and I didn’t know what I was going to do. Not only did I think that would be the end of my business, I also thought the whole world was going to collapse around me. That level of financial pressure is really difficult to cope with. There have been three times when I’ve thought. “This is it; it’s finished.”

I had a burst of inspiration. I remembered I’d had some editorial in Cleo magazine and I’d received hundreds of calls from readers asking where they could buy the pyjamas. I thought, “Why don’t I stick an advertisement in Cleo and include a coupon in it? If I sell 1000 of the 2000 pyjamas, I’ll cover my costs for the pyjamas and my costs for the ad and I’ll be out of strife.” It was a big risk – I like to think it was a calculated risk – because I had to add $10,000 onto my debt to pay for the ad, and no one in Australia was doing mail order back then. It ended up being a masterstroke because I received more than 4000 orders. It was one of those freaky things. It led me in a whole new direction and ended up with getting me out of wholesale and into mail order.

Mail order is a fantastic way to work. When you do wholesale, you have to rely on buyers and they don’t always have the same tastes as you and you get really annoyed with them because they buy bad things, then you have to wait for them to pay you and there are always problems. This way, you get the money upfront and you get to present the goods the way you want to. The pyjamas are forgiving as far as fit goes, the prices aren’t too high and I’m very good at marketing and visual merchandising, which helps a lot in our (quarterly) catalogues. I’m the only successful mail-order fashion person in Australia. Everyone else who has tried has been unsuccessful. For some reason, it just works for me.

Mail order is all about trust. Customers have to trust that the fabric feels nice, that the pyjamas are going to fit well and that we’re not going to take their money and run. Without trust, you cannot operate a successful business by mail order. Australians are generally reluctant to send their credit card details to a complete stranger, but they trust me.

A good catalogue is more than glossy pictures. Pyjamas don’t have a lot of ‘hanger appeal’, so it’s much nicer to see them on a body. You’ve got to choose the right models to fit with the image of the brand and set the right scene and mood. We go for the boy or girl-next-door look. People relate to that. I also play on people’s emotions by perhaps using my dog and children – people become more trusting when they see them.

Famous people wear my pyjamas, which doesn’t necessarily help you make money, but it does help get your brand name out there. You get a lot of free publicity out of it. I had Kylie (Minogue) and Jason (Donovan) wearing my pyjamas on the cover of The Age newspaper in Melbourne at the height of their fame in the ‘80s. I’ve had supermodels like Elle McPherson and Claudia Schiffer wearing them in parades here, Nicole Kidman, Dannii Minogue, Lisa McCune… everyone assumes that if celebrities wear your stuff, you must be rich. That’s not necessarily the case, but it did help my product and my brand.

I know my limitations. If I’m not good at something, I get advice on it. I also make sure I have a contingency plan in case things go wrong. If they do go wrong, you can follow an educated plan, instead of an emotional one.

I take customer service very, very, very seriously. I know everyone says that, but I actually do. I listen to them, change sizing for them. They have basically directed me. I’ve got very loyal customers who, when they write to me, say: “We love your product, but we’ve found this.” All the girls who take orders have a customer service book next to them and if customers offer some feedback, the girls write it down. I read the feedback once a week.

I am honest with my customers and that has worked in my favour. When I started, one of my prints would bleed in the wash, so I wrote a letter to all my customers who’d bought them and said: “I don’t know if yours has bled in the wash, but if you have any problems, please contact us.” People were so amazed that I’d admitted there might be a problem before it had even surfaced. It has helped me build a very nice reputation.

I listen to criticism of my products. The important thing is take the emotion out of it and understand that they’re not criticising you as a person, they’re criticising a product. You should listen to them; sometimes they’re right. That’s not always the case, but you’d almost be negligent if you didn’t listen to what people had to say. Customers can help you improve your product and, hence, make a more successful business.

I spawned a whole industry. There are so many people these days who do what I do, who have copied me over the past six or seven years, and rather than be protective and pretentious about it, I’m flattered. My attitude is, ‘go for it.’ It keeps us from getting complacent. It has made me a very nice living and it’s something I really enjoy because it’s the not-so-serious side of fashion – it’s not so dependent on trends.

I trusted my instincts. A lot of people say: “You can’t…. You shouldn’t…You won’t…” My philosophy is that if you really believe in whatever it is you are pursuing, and can afford to take the chance, go for it. Too many people say: “I hate my job, I should’ve done this,” when it’s all too late. Look at me: who would have thought I’d make a career out of pyjamas, of all things?