Ben Macpherson and the arithmetic of a beautiful sweater

In 2008, Ben and Belynda Macpherson launched a cashmere label in Bondi Beach with three styles. The proposition was pleasingly improbable: send an Australian beach lifestyle around the world in a sweater. Warmth was the product. Sunshine was part of the pitch.

Banjo & Matilda would reach department stores and online retailers far from Sydney. Ben, its co-founder and chief executive, had the job of helping turn a distinctive idea into a working business. That meant distribution, systems, margins and the other subjects that rarely make it onto a clothing label.

Today he leads D.LUXURY BRANDS in Los Angeles, working with premium consumer businesses on customer intelligence and marketing. The vocabulary has changed. There are personas, cohorts and profit models now. But the distance between a lovely product and a durable company remains the territory he occupies. His career becomes more interesting when you look behind the window display.

01A beach town, three sweaters, two founders

Belynda brought the creative direction. Her attachment to knitwear went back to ballet, when cashmere wraps and leg warmers were part of her everyday wardrobe. She began the label from a spare room at home, handling design, production, packaging and couriers. By 2014, the business had premises in Paddington and a Friday team meeting at a favorite Bondi cafe.

Even the name had a family detour. Belynda recalled that her sister-in-law Elle Macpherson had wanted her to name her son Banjo. She chose Xander for the child and eventually gave Banjo a place on the label. Matilda supplied the Australian companion. Naming a business, at least, involves fewer school forms.

The clothes carried small signals of intimacy. A hand-stitched XX appeared on garments, a pair of kisses tucked into a commercial product. Cashmere, silk and organic cotton supported an idea of clothes to keep. The brand wanted buyers to recognize a way of living as well as a fabric.

Ben arrived with experience beyond fashion. His earlier work included voice messaging at Voicecard, MovieFone Australia, technology publishing at Line56, entertainment businesses and performing arts education. He also served as chief marketing officer at Pie Face. The sequence moved through very different products, each requiring someone to connect an idea with customers, financing and execution.

02The shop floor has its own arithmetic

A glimpse from a Sydney warehouse sale in July 2011 brings the founders down to earth. One shopper remembered Ben and Belynda arriving with their baby, introducing themselves and doing the remaining merchandising before the sale. There were colored price tags and cashmere bargains. A company selling ease still had a morning of work to get through.

International expansion required a different kind of preparation. In June 2014, Banjo & Matilda appointed American sales agency HATCH to develop distribution. Ben emphasized the agency’s role in reaching both department stores and independent retailers. A country-sized market would have to be entered through individual commercial relationships.

The Resort 2015 collection offered evidence of that effort. In October 2014, the company announced a 160 percent increase in wholesale sales for the collection against the prior year. More than half of those wholesale sales came from the United States. The sweaters had acquired a considerably larger itinerary than their beach-town beginnings suggested.

The physical footprint expanded too. Banjo & Matilda reported 18 retail outlets at the end of December 2013, 129 by June 2014 and 203 by September. Each new outlet offered another place to encounter the label. Together, they also gave a small business a much wider distribution network to manage.

Yet expansion brought its own demands. Banjo & Matilda reported fiscal 2014 revenue of about $2.26 million, up 31 percent, and a 41 percent gross margin. It also reported an operating loss of $81,130 before corporate and public company costs. Ben described the challenge as building appropriate scale. The figures explain why a growing order book could coexist with unfinished work on profitability.

03Cashmere meets the back office

In October 2014, Banjo & Matilda announced an upgrade to its enterprise resource planning systems through RLM. The intended gains were productivity, efficiency and better control as wholesale and ecommerce expanded. Ben was discussing the machinery beneath the brand: the information and processes needed to keep a bigger operation coherent.

Fashion can make that work sound like a clerical interlude. It is difficult to deliver a promise of relaxed luxury if the business behind it cannot coordinate its operations. An elegant sweater has a less elegant administrative life, and someone must pay attention to both.

The company’s financial reporting described a model dependent on outside manufacturers and several routes to market: its own website, department stores, independent retailers and a branded shop. It also identified full-price selling, production costs and overhead as determinants of profitability. These were concrete operating constraints around a product designed to feel uncomplicated.

04A second life for the sweater

There was another way to move knitwear through the world. In 2011, Banjo & Matilda established the Sweater Exchange, an initiative associated with both co-founders and prompted by Belynda’s concern for homeless women and children. Customers could donate sweaters they already owned. The request began in a wardrobe rather than a wallet.

For its 2014 Australian campaign, the company worked with Mission Australia on distribution and Audi on promotion and donation drop-off points. Donors were offered a $50 online-store voucher. The arrangement made the next action specific: find an older sweater, hand it in, give it another useful life.

The exchange also attracted donations and promotion from familiar names, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Richie, Miranda Kerr and Elle Macpherson. Their involvement helped put attention behind an action that ordinary customers could take as well.

The idea fitted the category unusually well. A knitwear business had a community of people who owned knitwear, and an object that remained useful after its first owner had finished with it. The initiative gave the product a role beyond its original sale. A sweater could travel a long way without crossing an ocean.

05From selling the product to backing the business

D.LUXURY’s investment chapter brought Ben into partnership with other consumer founders. In 2018, the firm worked with H.I.G. on a $30 million financing for Parachute, the home essentials business founded by Ariel Kaye. Ben’s public assessment emphasized its understanding of customers, product development and brand building. Daniel Gestetner was identified alongside him as co-CEO.

That combination is telling. The product still mattered, but so did the organization capable of developing and selling it repeatedly. Bedding and cashmere occupy different shelves. Both ask a customer to care about an everyday object enough to pay for the particular version a brand has made.

In February 2019, Cuyana announced a $30 million round involving H.I.G. Capital in partnership with d.Luxury Brands. Founders Karla Gallardo and Shilpa Shah were preparing to expand stores and improve the supply chain. The business already had repeat purchasers and an identity built around buying fewer, better things.

Ben drew attention to the quality of Cuyana’s metrics. Here was a fashion investment discussed through customer behavior and business economics as well as taste. For someone who had helped run a label across wholesale, stores and ecommerce, those questions sat close to the work he already knew.

06The brief begins with the customer

D.LUXURY was founded in 2018, according to its company materials. Its present offer combines customer analysis with creative, landing pages, media and retention. DIGITALRx, its proprietary system, is intended to identify the buyers who contribute profit and track how those groups develop over time.

The operational implication is straightforward: a customer description must affect what a business does. The image in an advertisement, the product it presents, the page after the click and the subsequent messages all have a part in the sale. Ben’s firm proposes connecting those decisions to the value of the people who respond.

In May 2025, D.LUXURY joined Clearco and Finaloop on a promotion for American ecommerce businesses. The prize combined a DIGITALRx+ audit and a tailored ecommerce playbook with a year of accounting services and a Clearco gift card. Ben described a shared aim of reducing obstacles for ecommerce entrepreneurs. The package placed analysis beside financial administration and practical resources.

That is a recognizable extension of his earlier work. A founder needs a product people want, a route to those people and enough operational control to keep going. The modern marketing brief has acquired more data, but the business still has to function after the campaign ends.

07The investor still notices the campaign

In February 2026, Ben posted about Cuyana’s spring campaign. He singled out its portrayal of the customer moving through work and personal life: meetings, coffee, markets and evening drinks. His attention went to the coherence of the story and the people it addressed. Years into the relationship, the investor was still looking closely at the creative work.

An August 2026 hiring post made the connection explicit. D.LUXURY wanted a director of performance creative who could build a function, lead designers and producers, and speak with founders and chief marketing officers when results were disappointing. Ben called for “A builder, a doer, and someone who can hold a room.” The vacancy described work still to be made.

“A builder, a doer, and someone who can hold a room.”

Ben Macpherson / On hiring creative leadership, 2026

There is a useful continuity here, from cashmere styles to customer models. Ben’s work keeps returning to the moment when an appealing idea meets the obligations of running a company. The garment needs a customer. The customer needs a reason to return. And somewhere behind the beautiful photograph, someone has to make the numbers add up.