Maternity lingerie meets great expectations

HOTmilk Lingerie, a relative newcomer, has made a flying start, increasing sales by more than 150 per cent in the past three years.
In that time HOTmilk, which started designing and producing its sexy maternity lingerie in 2006, established a strong presence in the New Zealand, Australian and UK markets.
Now, the go-ahead company is embarking on a new growth phase after appointing its first general manager, Scott Newton.
"We've got a niche product and carved out a market for ourselves," said Mr Newton. "The brand is so strong and demand is enormous.
"When the business is growing that fast, you need to put controls and infrastructure in place. It's easy to miss those when you are just focused on growth."
Mr Newton, 34, joined HOTmilk last year as chief financial officer and with staff numbers increasing to 19 he has now stepped up to handle the day-to-day duties.
Co-founders Lisa Ebbing and Ange Crosbie are still very much involved - Lisa looks after marketing and customer services and Ange sales and design.
HOTmilk's sexy lingerie - nursing bras, camisoles, knickers and nightwear - is sent from its Chinese factories to 823 retail outlets in 47 countries, and it wants to step up sales in North America and Europe.
"We've established ourselves in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, and got most of the customers (stores) we need," said Mr Newton.
"Europe and United States are the growth markets. We've taken our time to get there because we have to make sure we have sufficient stock. You don't want to over-promise and under-deliver.
"In Europe, there's 8000 lingerie stores and we are in 160 of them so far."
HOTmilk has taken on a market development manager, Francois Cornet, and he's working on increased orders in France, Poland, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
It has signed a deal with Danish specialist retailer Wunderwear which has 25 stores and the HOTmilk gear is being trialled in four.
HOTmilk supplies 70 stores on the east and west coasts of the US and 72 in Canada, and Chicago-based Larry Lardner has also become a market development manager to grow sales.
"We found the Americans like the plain beige (champagne) colour, moulded cups and T-shirt bras and we've designed our next collection to take that into account," said Mr Newton.
Also, HOTmilk discovered advertising costs in the US were enormous, so turned to celebrities to promote its product.
One of Hugh Hefner's former girlfriends, Kendra Wilkinson, actress/singer Jennifer Hudson and Reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian have been spotted wearing HOTmilk lingerie.
HOTmilk is now producing 250,000 lingerie items a year and has just taken delivery of its latest Essentials collection which is broken into three styles: Luminous for champagne microfibre and lace, Blaze for jet black satin and microfibre, and Radiance for cameo rose microfibre.
The lingerie, designed in Tauranga, is made at two factories in the Quangzhou district and shipped to warehouses in Aviation Ave, Mount Maunganui, Melbourne, Atlanta and London. Most of the production is pre-sold.
Australia is the biggest market with 36 per cent of sales, Europe has 22 per cent, the UK 16 per cent, New Zealand 12 per cent, the US 9 per cent and Canada 5 per cent.
HOTmilk has signed up 280 specialist stores in Australasia and has customers in Israel, Slovakia, the United Arab Emirates, West Indies, Iceland and Santiago.
In the past three years, sales growth has compounded 168 per cent, including 106 per cent in 2008/09, and HOTmilk is aiming to have a presence in 2000 stores globally by 2013. Turnover will have passed $6 million if that's achieved.
"With what we are doing and rolling out, product-wise, I've no doubt the business will become an even bigger global story that what it is now," said Mr Newton.
"We run surveys with our customers and they tell us what they like and what they want to wear. For a woman, it makes a big difference putting on sexy maternity lingerie."
Rotorua-born Mr Newton graduated from Waikato University with a Bachelor of Management Studies in finance and accounting. He worked for Staples Rodway chartered accountants in Auckland, then became a Vodafone revenue analyst before heading to London.
Mr Newton lived there for five years, working in commercial finance for Virgin Mobile and media group EMAP. He also had a six-month contract with France Telecom as a group analyst dealing with the subsidiary companies through Europe.
He decided he'd had enough of the conference calls and returned to New Zealand in December 2008.
"We had a house to renovate in Tauranga and we always knew we would move there some time.
"I still wanted to work for a big business. I just didn't think that opportunity would come up in Tauranga. I can live the lifestyle I want and work in a challenging, fast-paced business and deal with people all over the globe at different times of the day."