Back In Business

She started in chocolate, but for Dunedin’s Megan Fairley, being made redundant gave her the chance to showcase sustainable, emerging designers on her fashion platform, Notion

- Sarah Catherall

Megan Fairley proudly walks around the streets of Dunedin in a charity T-shirt she designed that screams two words: Chocolate Queen. The online fashion queen also sends a complimentary block of Ocho craft chocolate out with every garment she sells through her fashion e-commerce business, Notion.

Chocolate was Megan’s world for 17 years, when she worked as a frontline production manager at Dunedin’s Cadbury factory – she even met her partner, engineer Craig France, 15 years ago at the factory when a machine broke down during the night shift. But in early 2017, she got the news that no-one wants to hear: her job and 360 others at the factory were to be disestablished, as MondeleÌ„z International, Cadbury’s parent company, planned to shift production offshore. After almost 90 years, the Dunedin production line was going to grind to a halt.

Cadbury staff, many of whom had worked at the factory for their entire careers, were told they would lose their jobs, however they had to stay on for another 12 months. The vivacious blonde frowns as she describes that period as one of the darkest times in her life. She had to undergo counseling to cope. “Going through that will live with me for the rest of my life. Having to look after staff for 12 months and to keep up their morale was horrific.”

LOVE AND LOSS

It wasn’t the first time Megan had experienced loss; she’d already coped with the death of both her parents and her older brother. “Having been through all that hell made me stronger,” Megan says. “I could then help the Cadbury staff when they were going through the redundancy.”