“I came off a wave and when I popped up I could see the board swirling toward me. It hammered me right on the head – I was lucky no teeth were broken,” smiles Gemma Wagstaff as she recalls the incident while surfing on a typically windy day at Lyall Bay. “I had a little bit of bleeding … and I felt really weird. I didn’t feel right – I was stressed out, confused.”
The concussion that followed couldn’t have happened at a worse time for the Wellington-based swimsuit and wetsuit designer who was making grand strides with her business, and in the world of fashion.
Gemma, 29, graduated design school in Wellington in 2018 – completing a four-year degree that delivered on her childhood dream.
“I always wanted to study fashion design, Gemma explains. “I knew it was what I wanted to do ever since I was a little kid.”
She has always been obsessed with the water. She swam competitively for 13 years, did surf lifesaving, enjoyed synchronised swimming, surfing – anything to do with the water – she was up for it.
“I was very obsessed with my swimwear growing up,” she admits. “I would always buy my swimwear online from America just to find cool stuff that people didn’t have. I knew that that’s the direction I wanted to take once I went to uni – I wanted to go down the swimwear path. That was my lifestyle.”
In Gemma’s final year she started playing with neoprene for a different project. And that’s when the penny dropped.
“I realised that I could source all these pretty-coloured neoprenes and learnt that I could digitally print on them too, with my own designs,” she recalls. “I was talking to a lecturer about my graduate collection and they’re like, ‘you should be doing it on wetsuits – this is what you live and breathe’. The goal was: how can I make literally the prettiest wetsuit?”
Gemma had grown up in a family of business owners so was never afraid to take the plunge into business ownership for herself.
Gemma’s graduate collection was well-received, and she was encouraged to apply for the 2018 ID International Emerging Designer awards being held in Dunedin.
“I actually applied on the last night of the cutoff,” she laughs. “I’m so glad I did. I got in and was one of 39 finalists from 21 countries around the world. When you become a finalist, you all go to all the shows. That was cool because I met people from all over the place and the creativity was insane.”
Gemma didn’t expect to do well but was enjoying the experience. TV3 decided to follow Gemma’s story. “I was a bit shocked,” Gemma smiles.
The event runs across two days with two shows. It is at the final show where they announce the winners. In the lead-up to that TV1 also asked to follow Gemma’s story. “TV1 news came and found me in the dressing room,” she recalls. “They were like, ‘Hey, we want to cover your story. Can we do an interview with you?’ I was like, ‘what is going on?’ I just thought I was coming to this cool little design competition. I was on the news two nights in a row, which was quite cool. And then I ended up winning the Most Commercial Collection Award.”
That win in such a prestigious fashion event was a huge boost for Gemma and her collection. “It was a springboard of lots of publicity with all sorts of media outlets,” she remembers. “The craziest one was Vogue Italia. They had done some articles on the show, so I showed up on their website. I always wanted my own business. So, I was like, ‘all right, let’s go’.”
“It was a springboard of lots of publicity with all sorts of media outlets. The craziest one was Vogue Italia. They had done some articles on the show, so I showed up on their website.”
Inspired by her win, Gemma spent the rest of that year researching and trying to find manufacturers. “That was tough – especially because ethics are super important to me. I was given advice to just go and find the cheapest place you can and to worry about ethics later, but I just couldn’t. With my morals and values, I needed to know that I am not supporting slave labour and there are no children making these suits. I just mentally couldn’t get past that.”
Gemma found a manufacturer on the Gold Coast in Australia. “My first two collections were made there,” she adds. “That was cool because I could pop over there and be very involved. I really liked that.”
But she said the deadlines were seldom met, and the quality varied, which started to impact on her business. The she came across a factory that’s ethically certified in China who could make the wetsuits to her specifications. “In comparison with China, if they give you a deadline, they stick to the deadline – it will turn up then,” Gemma explains. “And everything that you receive will be absolutely perfection – perfectly done. The communication is pronto. Everything is just amazing. They’ve got it down to a fine art. It seemed as if they didn’t have the volume of skilled people in Australia.”
Gemma also tried to bring the manufacturing back to New Zealand but met with a stumbling block. “My biggest issue I had with all the factories that we did have in New Zealand is the fact that I had my stuff digitally printed. That’s the hurdle here. If it was just standard plain-coloured wetsuits, of course, I can get that done here, but I’ve taken that design side a bit too far.”
Being a small business in the early stages, Gemma was unable to jump on a plane to check out factories in China to assess their ethical approach, but she knew of some ethical certifications that she trusted. She asked them directly for recommendations. “And that’s actually how I found my factory now,” she smiles. “They’re amazing … it is so nice just to know that what’s going to arrive will be exactly as it should be.”
Gemma first launched Gemma Lee in 2019, then had to endure lockdown, which benefited her small business. “It was amazing for me,” Gemma shares. “Everyone was buying wetsuits, so, it was great for sales, but it was a weird dynamic of being new to business and then suddenly having to shift the way you do things. You’ve got to reach people differently and market differently.”
Her business went from strength-to-strength. In 2021, Gemma came out with two new wetsuit collections.
At the end of 2021 her world unraveled after she was struck on the head by her board at Lyall Bay, suffering a severe concussion.
“I live in windy Wellington – it’s famous for wind,” she laughs. “I was just out one Saturday morning at Lyall Bay with my friends. It was windy but I shrugged it off and got on with it. The impact was a very big slam. A gust had picked my board up and it hit me right on the head. I had just journeyed with another friend who had been concussed from a skiing incident, but they had been off work for a year with their concussion. I was like, ‘oh my gosh, I can’t do this … I’m freaking out now’.”
Gemma’s friends followed her out of the water to make sure she was okay. “They told me to take it easy – to keep an eye on things. I didn’t know if I was concussed. I felt weird and not good, but immediately you don’t really know what’s happened.”
Gemma went home and spent the next two weeks “struggling through life”. “I’d go for a walk around the block, but I got really dizzy,” Gemma remembers. “I had to hold on to things and I was crying a lot, which is also another symptom of being concussed. Everything was just very overstimulating. I was really struggling. I still had a sore head for those two weeks.”
Gemma spoke to a paramedic friend who told her to go and get checked out. “The doctors were like, ‘yeah, no, you’re definitely concussed’,” she recalls. “I knew the journey that lay ahead. I was told no screens, avoid being in busy environments, no bright lights – all these things. That was really hard for me – when people break a bone, you just rest the limb. But how do you rest your brain? Do nothing? Just stare into space? I’m an active person.”
“I knew the journey that lay ahead. I was told no screens, avoid being in busy environments, no bright lights – all these things. That was really hard for me – when people break a bone, you just rest the limb. But how do you rest your brain? Do nothing? Just stare into space? I’m an active person.”
Gemma experienced headaches almost every day for six or eight months. “My head was always sore, and I’d always need an afternoon nap. And I’d get quite overwhelmed – for the first couple of months I had to get my supermarket shopping done for me because the noise, the bright lights, all the colours and all the people – it was too much. It’s very overstimulating.”
“Once you’ve experienced it, well, I would never wish that upon anyone,” Gemma adds.
Having a friend who had been through it meant Gemma could ask for tips to manage her recovery.
“He told me: use your energy like a credit card. If you think you’ve got enough, use a little bit, but don’t overdo it. Because once you overdo it, then you’re going to take two days to recover from doing that.”
“He told me: use your energy like a credit card. If you think you’ve got enough, use a little bit, but don’t overdo it. Because once you overdo it, then you’re going to take two days to recover from doing that.”
Gemma said it has taken two years for her to get back to where she was before the accident. “It was tough. In those first six weeks I found everything overwhelming – I cried every single day. So, to be happy again and back to myself is amazing. It’s such a gift.”
Like Gemma’s business, her surfing took a huge toll during that time, too. “I remember asking the concussion physio, ‘can I go surfing again?’ They responded, ‘hold up, we can’t risk getting re-hit, especially right now’. I had to put surfing on pause and eventually, they said I could surf if I got a helmet.”
Gemma thought that would be all she needed. “I remember the first time in the surf and I was petrified,” she admits. “I didn’t think I would be scared. I thought I’d just be going for another surf. But it was not that easy. That’s a mental battle that I’m still working through. It’s a love-hate relationship. Sometimes I have a good session, I don’t feel scared and I have fun. I catch some good waves and I’m like, ‘oh gosh, this is the best thing ever’. I love it. And then sometimes I go out and I’m freaking out and I’m bailing off a wave last minute.”
“But I know it is just part of the journey.”
Gemma experienced something similar when reigniting her business. “In the beginning I could barely look at a screen,” she offers. “I remember my therapist telling me to put my business on pause so I could look after myself because my brain is literally injured. That was quite frustrating. I hit my head in October, which is going into peak season of the entire year and here I am just parked up. It was really tough.”
“In the beginning I could barely look at a screen. I remember my therapist telling me to put my business on pause so I could look after myself because my brain is literally injured. That was quite frustrating.”
Throughout 2022 and 2023 Gemma was on the recovery journey and even questioned whether she should keep the business going. “It’s crazy thinking that now – I love it so much,” Gemma shakes her head. “But I had got lost in all the chaos of being so sick and having to put it on the side. I lost all the momentum from all my hard work.”
During that process, Gemma started working an office job part time. “The first week I started working there, I realised this is not for me,” she smiles. “I love working in business. I want to work on my own business. What the heck am I doing here? It was a wake-up call.”
For Gemma, 2024 was more like a relaunch for Gemma Lee. “I’m all in on my business now after that crazy journey of being concussed and getting back to myself. I’m so happy now and loving it and I love designing.”
She admits that running a swimwear and wetsuit business in New Zealand is not easy. “Business full stop is tough work,” Gemma smiles. “I’ve come to learn that it’s not as glamorous as you think it is. When you look from the outside, it looks glamorous – you can choose your own hours and if you want to go away and do that, you can go do that if you want. In reality, yes, those are great perks, but it’s not that glamorous. Everything falls on your shoulders. You’ve got to learn such a wide range of skills, you’ve got to figure it all out and you have to wear all the different hats and it’s hard. But it’s worth it.”
Gemma’s customer base is split 50 50 between New Zealand and Australia.
She said wetsuit production was more difficult than the swimwear side of her business, because it was full body. “Especially with the performance side of things, making sure it has the flexibility where you need it,” Gemma smiles. “And then the fit, as you can imagine, is the most difficult thing. It has to fit like a second skin and it has to fit different sizes, different body shapes. So yeah, it took some time to ace the cut and the style. Once I got to that point, I’m just continually improving things, so now it’s quite easy – rinse and repeat with different designs. But in the beginning it was the hardest – you’re starting from ground zero.”
“2025 will be my year,” Gemma laughs. “It’s been a journey – those two years are definitely the hardest years of my life so far. So, to come out the other side – I feel so much stronger and resilient now.”
