Rent a rack,
not a shop.

Every year New Zealand's design schools graduate a wave of fashion talent. They show at Fashion Week. The reviews are glowing. The industry nods along about "supporting the next generation."

Then what?

A shop lease is impossible. Online is a shouting match. Markets are weekends and weather. So the work sits in a spare room while the designer takes a job doing something else.

Prototype is the missing rung. A graduate fashion store at 320C Heretaunga Street West, Hastings... in the cultural quarter alongside MusicWorks, Hustle and The Line gallery. You don't rent a shop. You rent a rack.

How it works

• 0112 racks. That's the whole store.
• 02$200 a month per rack. That's it.
• 03Every dollar of sales goes to the designer. No commission. No split. We're not clipping your ticket.
• 04Minimum three months. Long enough to learn something real.
• 05Your label, your pricing, your story on the rack.

The catch, and it's a fair one: this store runs on its designers. If you're local, you take 2-3 days a month behind the counter. If you're not, your rack is courier-stocked and we cover your shifts with design students from EIT's IDEAschool... which means the counter is staffed by people who actually understand the work on the racks.

Twelve designers under one roof means twelve audiences walking in for one label and discovering eleven others. That's the point.

Why local fashion matters

New Zealand fashion has always punched above its weight because our designers make things with a perspective. Not fast. Not disposable. Garments with a point of view, made properly, by people who obsess over cloth and cut.

Prototype is fronted by Ryan Jennings, former CEO of Buy NZ Made. Years spent inside NZ manufacturing taught one lesson over and over: nobody works harder for their product than the people who make it here. Fashion designers most of all. The quality is real. The edge is real. What's missing is the shopfront.

Why now

At NZFW 2025, The Graduate Collections was the show people kept talking about. Eighteen designers from AUT, Massey and Whitecliffe. The reviews called the work genuinely fresh. Fashion Journal named it one of the most anticipated shows of the week.

And the loudest takeaway from the whole week, from the industry itself: support local design, or lose the makers.

The talent is not the problem. The retail pathway is. Lela Jacobs proved the alternative model works with her developmental studio on Karangahape Rd. Prototype brings that thinking to the provinces... lower rent, real foot traffic, a cultural quarter that already draws people in for music, art and coffee.

A live retail brief

If you teach final-year fashion students... at AUT, Massey, Whitecliffe, or EIT's IDEAschool... Prototype is a live retail brief with training wheels.

• AA student or fresh graduate tests real product with real customers for $200 a month. All sales are theirs.
• BThree months of sales data beats three years of guessing.
• CCounter days teach retail from the inside.
• DCohorts can share a rack and split the cost.
• EIDEAschool students: we want you on the counter. Paid shifts, or take it as credit toward your own rack... work the store, earn your spot in it.

Send this to your students. Or get in touch and we'll come talk to your class.