NEW ZEALAND A Great Place to Sail… …A Great Place to Build a Winning Team. New Zealand is a location that gives our company, and with it our partners, significant advantages of business environment, quality of demand, and market positioning. For a company involved in marketing premium sailing products, New Zealand provides one of the best product-testing grounds anywhere. With a longer coastline than any other country in the world (relative to land mass) ours is a truly maritime nation. Magnificent sailing conditions and a proud tradition in competitive yachting mean that sailing is a major influence on our lives, on how we spend our leisure time, and on how we use our incomes. The benefit we gain from being so close an active… [Read full story]
I was born here. My Tattoo Co. logo represents the Southern Cross. My Tattoo Co. name is Southern Guns which refers to the Southern Cross. I am Tangata Whenua (People of the Land). Everything about my Tattoo Co. is New Zealand based and I even took it upon myself to create a fern for Tattooing like there is for the Silver Ferns, All Blacks etc. I am the founder and Rep for a Global Tattoo Club called 13 Needles Tattoo Club. The one thing that makes me made from New Zealand is that I was born from the soil of Papatuanuku and raised by the sky of Ranginui…
To celebrate the launch of Made From New Zealand, the global online community for New Zealand businesses, hundreds of Kiwis gathered on Santa Monica beach California to leave their mark on the world. Sonia Yoshioka-Carrol talked with Founder Steve Adams to discover the twists and turns that journey has taken and why New Zealand businesses will ultimately benefit. When the team at Made From New Zealand (MFNZ) lead by Steve Adams started their journey with the creation of a giant silver fern on Bethells (Te Henga) Beach in 2001, little did they know just how long it would take to really develop their global brand, and the online community around it. To clarify – this is not the… [Read full story]
When Jeremy Moon first tried on a t-shirt made of merino wool, down on an isolated South Island farm in Marlborough (surrounded by 8,000 sheep), he knew he was onto something special. The singlet felt remarkably good – close-fitting, comfortable, warm. And it was 100% natural. The farmer who’d made the singlet had done nothing special to it. It was, Jeremy recalls, not exactly a fashion statement – but the potential was there to be seen. So Jeremy faced both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity was the value of wearing merino wool. He was sure people would pay for an experience like that. The challenge was communicating that value: how would people know that wearing merino was so worthwhile? Jeremy’s… [Read full story]
In January this year Wellington Based Web Development Company SilverStripe was thrust into the international spot light by being awarded the contract to build the Official U.S. Democratic Convention website. To give you some idea of the scale, recent released traffic statistics of the site measured 2.6 Billion Hits and 3.2 Million visitors during the four day convention and more than 350,000 hours of video had been viewed. With thousands of CMS applications around the world, what was it about the SilverStripe platform that cemented the deal? CEO of SilverStripe Brian Calhoun says that it ticked all the right boxes with the ability to integrate with third parties, the ability to scale and a high level of support throughout the… [Read full story]
Auckland based game design company IQideas Ltd is slowly but surely conquering the world with their award winning range of educational boardgames. Established on a plane trip back from the Melbourne Toy Fair in 2005 (the first business plan was written on the back of an airline sickbag!) the company has evolved into a serious player in the multi-billion dollar global boardgame market, with exports being channelled to markets across the USA, Australia, Germany, France, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It hasn’t been an easy journey though. The company was created on the basis of a creative idea care of founder Andrew Baker. Studying to be a maths teacher back in the early 1990s… [Read full story]
Glenn Martin founder of Martin Jetpack
Most New Zealanders are familiar with the Les Mills chain of gyms but did you know that the same Kiwi brand is also behind some of the world’s most popular workouts? Health club attendance is now the biggest adult “sport” in the Western world – bigger than football, tennis and golf combined – and Les Mills is leading the way when it comes to providing group exercise programs to this important market. Every week an estimated 5 million people work out to LES MILLS™ Group Fitness Programs in more than 12,000 clubs globally and they’re all developed right here in Aotearoa. The programs are found in Gold’s Gyms throughout the USA, have featured on MTV in the Netherlands and… [Read full story]
Luke Howard-Willis loved mountain biking, but when he realised that he and his friends were buying gear on-line from the United States, he called on his business brain - not his riding skills - to find a better way. The result was Torpedo7, a Hamilton-based on-line store offering sporting goods direct to consumers within 24-hours of them placing their order. Although mountain biking was the catalyst, Torpedo7 quickly branched out into all facets of cycling. Now the company stocks gear for mountain bikers, road cyclists, BMXers, motocross riders, snowboarders, skiers and outdoor enthusiasts. For Luke it’s been a hell of a ride. He founded the company in late 2004. Today Torpedo7 employs 70 people, has a small but growing operation in Melbourne and… [Read full story]