- Kym O’Leary has developed a career within the women’s workwear fashion space
- She was inspired by an unlikely farm item for the next development of her workwear, chook feed!
- Kym O’Leary shares her story below….
Topping up our glasses, my hubby, Stu, raised his with a grin.
“To you, Kym, and your next big adventure,” he toasted.
“Can you believe it?” I said excitedly.
It was 2020, and I’d just agreed to a deal with mining giant BHP.
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I’d built my business on giving women as many comfortable workwear options as men.
I didn’t have a background in fashion, but in 2013, I’d spotted a gap in the maternity hi-vis market after working on mining sites and seeing my then-manager, pregnant, and struggling with a hi-vis
shirt that didn’t do up over her belly.
Armed with innovation and drive, I built COgear.
And now, BHP wanted me to supply a full range of women’s pants.
“A dream come true,” I said, “but the range comes in 12 sizes, and BHP wants every size to come in four different leg lengths.”
That would mean 48 pairs of pants — a hefty cash outlay the business couldn’t handle.
As we sat brainstorming, Stu’s eyes lit up.
“Ever opened a grain bag, love?” he said.
Where’s he going with this? I wondered.
We’d both grown up on farms and I told him I had, for chicken feed.
“Remember how if you pull the thread on a bag of grain one way, it unravels the stitching and opens up?” he said.
Ding! It was a lightbulb moment.
I’d take the design concept from the chook feed bag and use this to solve my problem of making one pair of pants adjustable to four lengths, ensuring the garment remained perfectly hemmed.
The next morning, I set to work making samples. I tinkered for hours at night and on weekends.
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When it got hard, I’d channel Sara Blakely, the creator of Spanx.
Over the years, I’d read everything I could about Sara and knew she’d built a billion-dollar business solving real-life problems.
A year on, I had a sample and put the wheels in motion to patent my invention.
Sara believes in creating a new word, so I decided to call my patent-pending design HMZ — pronounced “hems”.
It took another year to get the design working in the factory.
But once my pants with the HMZ feature — a pull tab that lets you easily adjust pants to your height — rolled off the production line, I knew I had a winner!
“Super simple, can’t wait to wear these at work,” a woman shared on my website.
I took such messages as a sign. I’d found a simple, effective way to solve a real-life problem.
Just like Sara Blakely, I thought, beaming.
Today, I’m excited about what’s ahead. This could revolutionise uniforms for the global mining industry.
I’ve got companies all over the world keen to use HMZ for their workwear.
But the technique can be used to alter any type of uniform.
I can only imagine how happy HMZ will make Aussie parents — they’ll never need to hem a school uniform again!
Learning as I went and being patient are what got me here. I also embraced not being an expert.
It’s fun figuring out how to do something. Sure, it takes time, but that’s part of the journey.
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