Alexandra Smart

Alexandra Smart is a highly respected and creative business leader, strategist, entrepreneur, and consultant with over 30 years’ experience in hyper competitive industries.

Her ability to combine creative thinking and commercial imperatives, has cemented her reputation for business acumen, leadership, strategy, and high performance. Alexandra is an expert at applying creative entrepreneurial vision to business ventures and driving for scale and profitability while operating with integrity and at the highest ethical standards.

Alexandra has held executive leadership management roles in the media and digital sectors, as well as, for the last 20 years, founding and scaling her own fashion luxury design enterprise, GINGER & SMART. She executed the sale of the business to private equity investors in 2019 and now divides her time between board directorships, public speaking, advisory work, and executive coaching and mentoring with eci Partners.

Notably, as Founder and Managing Director of GINGER & SMART, she led the growth and international expansion of the brand across 5 channels (national and international, digital, wholesale, and corporate). With a strong sense of changing consumer and client demands, Alexandra has successfully navigated highly complex environments across cultures in areas such as strategy, people leadership, digital and e-commerce, design, manufacturing, supply chain management, regulatory and environment regulation and logistics. The brand is now highly recognised as a leading sustainable and ethical label focusing on social responsibility, and at the forefront of design.

With a keen focus on the arts and social responsibility, Alexandra is a spokesperson for the fashion industry and a seasoned public speaker. She was recently voted in the Power 30 List of Influential Retailers.

Alexandra is a Director of the Melbourne Fashion Festival, a member of the Contemporary Collectors Benefactors Committee (CCB) at the Art Gallery of NSW, a mentor with the AGSM/UNSW Alumni Leader Mentor program and has also been a member of the TCF Innovation Committee advising the Australian government on innovation and local manufacturing for the Textiles, Clothing and Footwear (TCF) Sector. She has also been a committee member of SunSCHine, tasked with raising funds for the Sydney Childrens Hospital Network.

Alexandra holds a Masters Business Administration (MBA) from the AGSM and a Bachelor of Communications (BA Journalism).

About Ginger & Smart

GINGER & SMART designs for spirited women whose distinctive style is an expression of their individuality. A sense of cool confidence and discovery underpins the luxury contemporary design aesthetic of the brand, which seeks to combine the polished and the playful aspects of a woman.

Founded in 2002 by Sydney based sisters Alexandra and Genevieve Smart, the inspiration to establish the business came from the desire to combine family talent to build a strong fashion lifestyle brand. With Alexandra’s creative business background as an editor and publisher for high quality lifestyle magazines, combined with Genevieve’s years spent at the design helm of some of Australia’s most successful fashion businesses, their united industry knowledge covers every possibility for a successful and exciting fashion venture.

GINGER & SMART combines captivating design with the finest quality materials and first rate manufacturers. The brand product mix includes ready to wear fashion, an accessories line, swim, and a sister collection called AKIN by GINGER & SMART.

GINGER & SMART has 9 dynamic stores that showcase the essence of the brand to their discerning customers. The label is placed with carefully selected stores throughout the world and is available in over 40 boutiques in Australia.

Alexandra talks about

Building a Brand/Business in the Creative and Retail Industries

• Germinating an entrepreneurial idea that sets you apart from others: what can you bring to the table that makes your offering special, relevant, and sustainable
• Finding the right business structure and suppliers and buyers to sustain a business over the long term
• Team, team, team focus
• Navigating the necessary walk of creativity and commerciality

Entrepreneurialism and Creativity

• What makes a creative idea stick
• How can the seemingly opposing concepts of entrepreneurial speed and creative nurturing marry and work for the long term
• The key attributes required every day to make this marriage work

Women in Business

• Inspiration
• Empowerment
• Youth and Expertise
• The reality of the work/life balance: debunking the myths…
• The importance to women of planning a career path that encompasses kids and family
  Keeping going without losing health and wellbeing

Social responsibility as a business practice

• Sustainability How to embed sustainability into your business
• Ethical trading
• The importance of being transparent and authentic
• Importance to culture and the bottom line

The GINGER & SMART Journey

• The start up story
• How we have built a business, brand, team
• The ups and downs and lessons learnt