The Fourth Effect

You’re scrolling through Instagram and all you see is sponsored ad after sponsored ad. Rather than having a marketing team work overtime to sell as many products as possible, one of Canberra’s newest online streetwear fashion labels, Fourth Avenue, has a different approach.

This clothing brand has a unique business model: it only sells products for four days each month, starting on the fourth day, and it donates $4 from every sale to The Ricky Stuart Foundation to support people and who live with autism.

Fourth Avenue co-founder, Joseph Sergi, says the ‘4th model’ helps the label to avoid bombarding its audience with promotions for clothes every day. “We wanted to … spread awareness about disability and the misconceptions … not just sell clothes,” he says. “We want to be more than that.”

Sergi’s friend and business partner, Caitlin Maloney, works in the disability sector and sees first-hand the stigmatism that those in the the community face daily. “We felt if we could use our platform to try and educate people as much as we can, then I feel like we’ve done our job,” she says.

The pair’s long-term business goal is to employ more people who live with visible and invisible disabilities and to keep building a more informed community.