Harris Tapper Hits the US
Harris Tapper cracked Down Under. Now, it’s moving on its global ambitions with a US expansion plan, starting with New York. Here’s how.
Harris Tapper founders Sarah Harris Gould and Lauren Tapper aren’t quite sure how it happened, but New York makes up 10% of their New Zealand-based brand’s overall sales.
Built to fit into the modern woman’s daily life — from work, to school drop-off, to dinner and drinks — Harris Tapper’s pieces are a play on everyday basics, with an edge and flare meant to stand out, rather than seamlessly blend. “Our core pillar is easy elegance. Our pieces, there’s something special and unique about them, but it’s still a shirt. You need those things to carry you through the day,” Tapper says.
The mysterious New York boom is a rare gap in the pair’s intricate knowledge of every small detail of their brand mechanisms. From the brand’s launch, each move has been informed by data, metrics, and margins. “Every decision we make, from a business perspective, product, operational, it’s all very considered and thought out,” Harris Gould says. “We’re not spontaneous decision-makers,” Tapper agrees.
The brand’s New York breakthrough, though, has left the design duo with more questions than answers, unable to attribute the influx to a single article or channel push. It is, they conclude, down to word-of-mouth. “We have had people say, ‘Every time I wear this, five people stop me in the street and ask,’ which is so nice because, especially in such an ad-heavy, tech world, good product still speaks for itself,” Tapper says. “And sometimes, it doesn’t need to be the most ostentatious thing — it can just be a really beautiful pant.” It’s already well-loved by Vogue editors from Australia to New York.
This 10% sales mark was the confirmation Harris Gould and Tapper needed to get started on their move across the Atlantic, which they had begun exploring one year ago with a first trip to New York to test the waters. US expansion was always the plan, the founders note; it just came about faster than expected. This week, the brand is officially launching in the US, via an exclusive with Moda Operandi and the launch of an owned US website.
“We instantly saw the potential in Harris Tapper’s fresh take on wardrobing for the US client,” says Marc Rofsky, Moda Operandi’s VP of ready-to-wear. “It has that perfect blend of femininity and confidence that New York women love, and feels like a new form of power dressing.” Moda Operandi has been in talks with Harris Tapper for years, Rofsky says. “We wanted to respect their deliberate pace, so we waited until they felt ready for the American market. But when several of our most influential clients started buzzing about the brand at a Moda event last year, we knew interest had spread to NY. It affirmed that the timing was perfect.”
Still, Harris Tapper isn’t a new brand by any stretch. The label was founded in New Zealand by Harris Gould, a former buyer, and Tapper, who worked across merchandising and design. Originally a 12-shirt collection, the line expanded quickly to include basics such as tailored pants and structured dresses. After building a solid base and following at home in New Zealand, Harris Tapper officially launched in Australia two years ago. The founders’ focus on quickly growing the Australian market drove the region’s sales above its New Zealand revenues. Seeing Australia became the brand’s biggest market encouraged Harris Gould and Tapper to consider further expansion.
Harris Tapper has a formula, and it’s one that carries from Down Under to the States. Bestsellers, the founders note, have carried across countries, including the sleeveless wrap Chamberlain Top ($390) and the tailored Irving Trouser ($380). “It’s almost like a global staple, which was the intention we designed it with: that it didn’t matter if you’re in New Zealand or New York, you could wear those pieces easily,” Tapper says. Here’s how the pair is building for the latter.
Harris Gould and Tapper at Chinatown’s Bridges restaurant for the Moda Operandi launch.
Harris Tapper is entering the US with a strong brand identity. It’s one that the founders have cultivated over the years and strengthened only recently. The brand’s point of difference from the many upscale ‘easy basics’ brands, the pair agree, is the slightly off-kilter proportions and fabrications that the brand embraces, whether it’s a broader-than-usual shoulder, or an otherwise plain silk pant with a faint pattern etched on top.
Of course, there’s stiff competition in this arena. “There are a lot of brands going after the core pieces of a woman’s wardrobe that are minimalist, so to speak,” Tapper acknowledges, implicitly referencing brands from Khaite and The Row to Theory and Cos. “Hopefully, there’s something offbeat or subversively feminine or slightly morbid about us.” Harris Gould puts the strength of the brand DNA down to the founders’ confidence in their work, built not from the get-go but over time. “We now feel confident enough that we are leaning into it — we’re not trying to be everything to everyone,” she says.
This means that, as the brand expands internationally, there are no plans to adjust the aesthetic to fit its next destination; it’s always been intended to be global. What does change are the smaller details: the fabric, the colors. “For example, a coat that you could get away with in Sydney or in Auckland, we are making that in a full wool fabric, rather than suiting, for the New York market winter,” Harris Gould says. “So there are definitely things like that that we have to consider now more than we did before, but in terms of the look and feel, it’s the same.”
What shows up first on each site will vary, too. Though the US and Australia/New Zealand sites will both have Harris Tapper’s full range, the featured images and promoted products will vary by region, to cater to the opposite seasons. “It’ll just be a case of how we merchandise,” Harris Gould says.
Each time Harris Gould and Tapper have traveled to New York over the past year, they’ve stayed in a different area with a high concentration of orders. This trip, after celebrating the Moda launch in New York, Tapper is headed to the Hamptons and Greenwich, the brand’s two other high-volume delivery hotspots. After this, she’ll stop by Los Angeles, Harris Tapper’s second most popular US city.
“Just to understand where [the customer] gets coffee, where they eat out, what gallery they would go to — how they live there, how they spend their day,” Harris Gould says. It’s why the team took a full year to officially launch in the States. “It’s been a big research piece as well, from an operational and a design perspective,” she adds.
This decision to go deep is, in part, informed by the brand’s initial foray into international retail. Harris Tapper launched at Harrods in London in 2020, just three years into the brand, and right at the start of the pandemic. “We couldn’t get over there,” Harris Gould recalls. “It was a massive learning curve for us. That’s when we decided to go deep in each market and do it really well and in a considered way.” Unable to spend time in London, they scaled back, focused on New Zealand, and prioritized local before expanding to Australia just over two years ago. (The brand is no longer stocked at Harrods, and is holding off on any UK launch until it’s cracked the US.)
Harris Gould and Tapper believe that spending time close to the women they are selling to will enable them to stay the course. “We want to find those women and figure out how they shop, do they have kids, what are they doing on the weekends? What are their careers like?” Tapper says. This is what the product and brand are built around.
“Commerciality and margins have been important from day one,” Harris Gould says. “It’s not something that came after the fact. It’s important if you want to build a sustainable business for the long term — and we intend to be here for a very long time.”
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