Hard work saw Sue stitch up success

Wanganui's Sue Hill is proof that women can do anything.

She started off as a young mother doing repairs and alterations for a Wanganui dry cleaner and now owns three shops and employs 15 people.

"These people that sit on their bums and say 'I can't do anything', they're wrong," she said.

Ms Hill celebrates 25 years in her own business this year and has raised four children at the same time.

She said it took will power, long hours of hard work, honesty and the desire to give customers prompt and quality service.

She's been honing her sewing skills since the age of 7, and has a flair for fabric and design and a "try anything" attitude. "If it can be made, it can be altered. That's what I always think."

Repairs and alterations may seem a humble occupation, but she has met people as faraway as Fiji and Venice who knew about her chain of stores.

After leaving school, Ms Hill got a job at a Pahiatua clothing factory and then worked at another, Chilco, in Wanganui.

As a young mother, she would sew at home, with a baby on her knee, and sell her wares at the Gonville Craft Market.

Bored and stuck at home with two small children, she went around the Wanganui drycleaners offering her services for repairs and alterations.

Some time later, Kiwi Drycleaners in Maria Pl asked for her services and she was soon working for other drycleaners in town and menswear shops as well. Sometimes, she sewed for up 12 hours a day.

Sick of working for others, she opened her first small shop in Maria Pl in February, 1987.

It felt good to work only nine to five and to separate work from home.

But within three weeks, she had to hire a staff member and, by July, had to move to larger premises, also in Maria Pl. Soon, she had three staff.

The shop was extremely busy and Ms Hill often found herself returning to sew at night, from 8pm to 2am.

She has never done a course about how to run a business, does her own bookwork and "just learned it the hard way".

By 2001, she was thinking about her superannuation and was wondering about starting up a franchise. She talked to a customer about her idea, who then put her in contact with a franchise adviser.

"It pays to talk to people and I like to talk," Ms Hill said.

She opened a shop in Palmerston North that year and another in Wellington in 2006. In the BNZ Centre, it employs five people and the annual rent is $70,000.

But she's thinking about letting go of the BNZ Centre shop and buying a house in a good area to use as a base for the Wellington business as well as a place to stay.

If that plan goes ahead, all the difficult sewing will be done there with staff and basic machines at the other depots to do the easier and urgent work.

Ms Hill now has 15 hand-picked staff and some - like Diane Bourne - have been with her for years.

She said they were generally "loyal and fantastic" workers.

And although Ms Hill never did get to start that franchise, she's gone one better - owning a chain of shops instead.