I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Events at 3:25 pm on Thursday, 10 May 2007
I was very proud to win the ‘Absolutely Creatively Wellington Ambassador’ award at the Wellington Gold Awards last night. Here is a photo for my mum …
There were 800 people at the event to celebrate Wellington business. Some great company video’s. I liked the one from ProjectX.
blog
Only a mother could love such a face! Seriously, though, congratulations. You’re creating a lift in the buzz about entrepreneurship and the tech industry that’s been long needed.
Wellington Gold Awards - Congratulations…
The Wellington 2007 Gold Award winners were announced last night. phil@ted’s baby buggy business took supreme honours. Roderick Deane received a special “Wellington business icon’ award. Alex Malahoff from GNS Science and Rod Drur…
Well done Rod and yes I concur with Jim that you’re creating an industry exposure that is long overdue. I just wish that New Zealand could stop tagging individual’s successes to the industry itself. For example - rather than saying Sam Morgan is great because look what he did with entrepreneurship, we could just say look how great entrepreneurship is given what TradeMe achieve. It’s akin to the Better By Design habit of picking up individual personalities rather than looking at success generically.
My thoughts anyway
Rod. Congratulations. Keep being noisy, keep making a difference…
Yes, well done Rod. I was delighted Phil & Teds won the supreme award - they are a fantastic Kiwi story even if they have had to take manfacturing offshore. In NZ, the mountain buggy has a higher profile probably because it is cheaper, but I had both sent out to us when our daughter was born in 1997 and it was the Phil & Teds that attracted the most attention walking around Richmond….
I think I read that Campbell Gower has no intention of selling the company any time soon and instead wants to grow the P&T empire, so this should be a great story for years to come, with plenty of export $$ flowing back to Wellington.
While the IT afficionados on this site might laugh, I think P&T’s has a lot of the elements that made Trade Me so successful:
- The company sells consumer products and therefore is exposed directly to the end user who make up the largest possible market and pay the largest margins (ignore the distributors and resellers as they are only clipping the ticket on the way through)
- The company didn’t invest a lot in advertising at the outset, but allowed “word of mouth” to build the brand and market. As a consequence, the brand is now very robust premium brand that attracts premium pricing
- The company is selling into a big and growing market - people keep having babys and people love to buy new baby stuff, whether they really need it or not. There is also a big “community” element surrounding parenting particularly new parenting, and those communities drive purchasing choices
- The business is owner run, and they have worked bloody hard year in year out to make it a success (the necessity for 200% commitment spanning years not months can’t be underestimated, and was a key factor in Trade Me’s success).
Of course, P&T’s isn’t a dominant brand like TM in NZ, BUT it has now created brand exclusivity which is the next best thing, and the fact P&T is in a global market provides longer term growth opportunities than are available to TM in NZ.
Food for thought amongst tech investors?
Congratulations on the silverware - however, another uninvited apostrophe has sneaked into your post above. Could it be that yours is an incurable condition?
Awesome Rod, big congrats. Having already got this far its exciting to think that its still early days for you. Look forward to the year ahead with you, always an inspiration.
Congratulations Rod! You deserve it x10 as you are making a difference at the grass roots by sharing your knowledge to help unleash the talent in Wellington.
Congratulations Rod. You’re doing so much for the industry and deserve it richly.