Who is NZ's savviest entrepreneur?
BusinessDay
Who is NZ's savviest entrepreneur?
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OPINION: We may be a small country but New Zealand has produced some extraordinary entrepreneurs.
They are creative, risk takers who start up businesses. Sometimes their ideas come off spectacularly and sometimes they don't. They're people who aren't afraid to break the mould.
On the heels of our canniest chief executive officer poll, BusinessDay now brings you the search for New Zealand's savviest entrepreneur. Once again we've put together a poll featuring five candidates.
Our selection is clearly subjective and our poll isn't scientific. We limited candidates up for selection to people who are still alive and living in New Zealand.
Some who didn't make our poll but might have include Navman founder Peter Maire, Mainfreight founder Bruce Plested, AfterMail and Xero founder Rod Drury, Tony Falkenstein, 42 Below founder Geoff Ross, Cavalier Corporation's Tony Timpson, Weta Workshop's Richard Taylor, Touchdown Productions founder Julie Christie and Rakon founder Warren Robinson.
Aside from voting in our poll, we're also keen to get your comments and suggestions on our contenders plus any other names you think deserve the savviest entrepreneur title.
Before you vote in our poll, here are brief profiles on the five candidates.
Sam Morgan
An inspiration to the internet generation. The twenty something Morgan, struggling to buy a heater to warm his Wellington flat, spotted an opportunity and launched auction website Trade Me in 1999. In 2006 he sold the incredibly successful business to Stuff.co.nz's parent company, Fairfax Media, for $700 million.
Speaking last November at a Wellington function marking Global Entrepreneurship Week, Morgan said being an entrepreneur might be one of the safer options during trough economic times. New Zealanders thought of entrepreneurship as a niche, high risk, slightly crazy alternative that was not normal. Meanwhile our smartest people were training as lawyers, accountants, doctors and engineers because this was the norm and seen as safe.
But Morgan said it could be safer to be an entrepreneur, "especially in times like these." Entrepreneurs developed a skill set which gave greater adaptability and the ability to survive part-time.
"We seem to have focused wrongly on building CVs rather than building businesses," he said.
Michael Hill
Inspiration takes many forms. The unlikely driver for Michael Hill was the burning down of his dream home in Whangarei. The violin enthusiast was at the time having a comfy life working in the family jewellery business. After the shock of seeing his life turned upside down in such a manner, Hill galvanised himself and set out on his own with the aim of establishing jewellery stores that were more accessible than normal and dared to push the bounds of marketing.
Hill fronted television adverts himself and while the ads didn't tend to win popularity contests, they got people through the doors. It is difficult to remember Hill and the strong team he gathered around him making many mistakes. A brief excursion into shoes might have been the most significant. Hill, as chairman and substantial shareholder, leaves the day-to-day running of the business in the more-than-capable hands of CEO Mike Parsell.
But he remains an inspirational figure. His off-the-cuff addresses at annual shareholder meetings are motivational speaking at its finest. "Nobody has taken a discount jeweller and made it a global brand," he told shareholders a couple of years ago. "And if we marry these two things together by producing the same quality as a Prada or a Versace or any of these great brands, but sell at about a fifth of the price, I think we're on to a winner. I know we're on to a winner."
As of the end of 2008 the company had 234 stores across New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US. For the six months to December it produced $227 million in sales.
Karen Walker
As the Nelson Mail put it in a recent profile, the fashion designer's story is one of humble beginnings and hard work. Walker left Auckland's Epsom Girls' Grammar aged 17 to study fashion design. Now, aged 39, Walker's clothing is on sale in hundreds of shops around the world and on display at the prestigious London and New York fashion weeks.
She also has an eyewear collection, a jewellery collection and a range of paints at Resene. Then there's her Swandri range and she recently adapted some designs for Barbie to help celebrate the iconic doll's 50th anniversary. Real women Walker has dressed include Madaonna, Kate Hudson, Bjork, Claudia Schiffer and Cate Blanchett.
Walker told the Nelson Mail the attitude of "being contrary" runs strong in her designs. "Our ongoing muse is The Outsider, our anti-It Girl." The job of a fashion designer is to challenge what's current and your own comfort zone.
"Mikhail [her husband] and I continuously challenge each other. Neither of us is prepared to be in a comfort zone all the time because in that place, nothing new is created."
Stephen Tindall
Stephen Tindall had been in retail for 12 years working for a large company before taking the plunge and investing $40,000 in a single retail outlet on Auckland's North Shore in 1982. With The Warehouse, Tindall quickly established the template for the now famous "Red Sheds", with their bins, racks and concrete floors and "where everyone gets a bargain" slogan.
Tindall and The Warehouse led the way in getting inexpensive imported goods into New Zealand homes and the business grew and grew. A move into Australia was a notable failure. Tindall was prepared to acknowledge that in front of shareholders in 2005. "...I would like to stand up here and personally apologise that I was part of that decision. Would I have made that decision again knowing the facts, I probably still would because I think taking risks is the right thing to do and I believe that decision was made with all shareholders in mind."
Tindall moved aside from The Warehouse's chief executive chair a while ago, but he remains on the board and through his own interests and the philanthropic Tindall Foundation controls over 50 percent of the company.
The Warehouse currently operates 85 Red Sheds and 46 Warehouse Stationery stores and has annual sales of around $1.8 billion. Tindall has gone on to invest substantial sums in a variety of start-up and early-stage businesses. He was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2007.
George Fistonich
The 2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Fistonich founded the multi award winning Villa Maria Estate wine business in 1961. In his youth Fistonich helped his father tend his acre of grapes in Mangere.
In 1961, aged 21, he leased land off his father to start making wine which he sold at the cellar door. A couple of the first wines Fistonich ever made won the second and third prizes at the 1962 Easter Show. This as he told the Southland Times, convinced him that he was on the right track.
Then, 15 years after starting in the wine industry, Fistonich bought Vidals in Hawkes Bay where he opened New Zealand's first winery restaurant.
There were tough times with voluntary receivership in the mid-1980s and the country's first publicly owned vineyard business in the 1990s with the sharemarket float of Marlborough's Seddon Vineyards.
Named one of the world's 50 great wine producers by American magazine Wine Spectator, Villa Maria claims to have been the world's first major wine company to declare itself a 'cork free zone" in 2004. All its wine bottles have since been sealed with screwcaps.
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Bollocks. The proper definition of an entrepreneur is that of "successful risk taker". The only worthwhile recipient of this mantle is GRAEME HART - the man on the top of the (wealth) mountain did not fall there!! (Yes, but he's not noted for starting up businesses, editor).
Rod Drury is an Entreprener from Wellington whose Accounting Softward company Xero is making headlines. He was awarded the Hi-Tech New Zealand "Entreprener of the year" 2006 & 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Drury
Agree. Whikipedia defines an entrepreneur as on: " who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. It is an ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to create and market new goods or services." The defining characteristic here is "New" which puts Richard Taylor and Peter Jackson way ahead of the pack. What most of the others have done is not new—just very successful at more of the same. If it's "positive International Publicity" you want, (comment #11) then you'd be hard pushed to go past Lord of the Rings.
Surely the savviest entrepreneurs are not those who make the most money but those who are successful in areas that are way out of the mould and put NZ on the map. AJ Hacket of Bungi comes to mind and what about Burton Silver who set up his own book packaging company to distribute millions of odd ball books like "Why Cats Paint" and invented the oval golf ball and the Game of GolfCross. Richard Downes-Honey of High Modulus, who created the original Plastic Fantastic formula that brought NZ world-wide yachting recognition is another. As New Zealanders we derive far more kudos from the positive international publicity created over the years by such left-of-field entrepreneurs than we do from successful jewelry manufacturers, or on-line shopping sites, no matter how much money they've made.
What about Philip Mills? The man is a machine. I have had the honour of working for him in the past and he is truely an entreprenuer. He has taken a small Kiwi family business and made it global. He won Entreprenuer of the year a few years ago.
Whilst on the subject, what about Seeby Woodhouse?
Whats with these lists of NZ's top whatever - I assume that they all paying for the free advertising that they're receving from this?
As John mentioned, no Mike Pero on the list? Mike Pero Mortgages expanding into insurance and financial services; Pacific Simulators and Flight Experience which he helped build up and then sold a chunk of to Ocean Partners; the new escrow business...truly entrepreneurial. OK, some of the new starts/exisiting businesses he has been involved with might not have been wildly successful but that has not deterred him at all. Maybe not in the same vein as Michael Hill, but no Mike Pero ojn the list seems a glaring omission and devalues the while exercise. As Marker mentions, some other true entreprenuers missing as well.
Karen Walker for sure, she is the only one who has started multiple businesses herself from scratch. Entrepreneurship is business creativity and she is creativity through and through.
All 5 are good, and think all except Stephen Tindall have been part of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Surely, Graham Hart has to be on the list and most likely winner ?
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Being a "successful risk taker" is only one of many qualities of a successful entrepreneur. The people listed are all well deserving choices but represent only a handful of the hundreds of successful kiwi entrepreneurs that flourish here in NZ and abroad. As we do not teach the benefits of entrepreneurship at school, it is not yet seen as a viable alternative to the traditional "professions" yet I believe entrepreneurship will one day prove the best model of work organisation in our knowledge economy. Because of his contribution to education I'm a big supporter of Tony Falkenstein and from this list I may have to go Stephen Tindall because of initiatives such as KEA & World Class Kiwis and the recent move on plastic bags.