About us

The business concept for Apparel Line first came into fruition in the 1980’s when the original Apparel Line was started by Maria Jinx. Maria worked in conjunction with Parcel Express, which was also operated by a fellow ex – TNT staff member at the time.

Maria’s business was formerly known as Apparel Line then, and she operated a fantastic and quite substantial garment cartage business around the country. Sadly, Maria sold the business to XP Couriers a few years later. Following this, XP Couriers was sold to Sky Road Couriers, which was later sold to Courier Post. 

Initially Courier Post kept the business concept of Apparel Line operational, by taking over the employment of the courier drivers, and by ensuring that their customer’s garments were kept hung throughout transportation. However, all of that changed over the ensuing years and subsequently Courier Post no longer operate vehicles with hanging capability, nor have they any hanging garment facilities in their distribution centres throughout New Zealand.

Apparel Line as it is now, was reborn in 1995, when a number of its current management team were working for an international forwarding and 3rd party warehousing operation which specialised in apparel. That company (IDS) was a big user of the original Apparel Line, and found that the level of service changed significantly once Courier Post took over the business.

We discovered that our clients freshly pressed garments were being transported lying around the bottom of courier vans, instead of being transported hung, as promised. It was then that we realised we needed to change service providers, but from experience there appeared to be very limited options in New Zealand providing excellence in transportation and delivery in the courier market, especially who understood the intricacies of delivery in retail, with its deadlines and protocols.

Subsequently we enlisted the services of Fashion Transport the alternative hanging garment service provider at the time; however we soon discovered that they were not without issues either. Whilst Fashion Transport actually hung the garments throughout transportation, the problem was however that they only moved freight when they had enough volume to fill a truck, therefore the freight did not leave every night.

We found that no one in the industry actually offered a daily service throughout New Zealand for transporting hanging apparel. Having been real customers for so many years, and having been continually disappointed by other service providers, we decided we could do a better job ourselves at providing a competitive and reliable service in this industry.

Since then, Apparel Line has grown from strength to strength in both hanging transport and in standard carton and satchel courier services. We don’t have a sales team, yet Apparel Line is experiencing significant growth of about 20% every year, purely through word of mouth from satisfied customers.