Award winners in diverse fields

Press, 27 January 1988, Page 35

Award winners in diverse fields

By

MARK REYNOLDS

Over the last 21 days seven young Cantabrians have been learning how to run a business.

They are this year’s award winners in the Canterbury Enterprise Scheme, which is administered by the Canterbury Development Corporation (CDC). The award provides a three week intensive training workshop; followup business counselling; and a $3OOO grant towards research, development, and further planning. Joint sponsors of the scheme are the Christchurch Press Company, KPMG Peat Marwick, Trustbank Canterbury, IBM, and the CDC.

The award winners have been tutored by small-business experts, and have learned all the main aspects of running a business. At the same time they have prepared a detailed business plan of their own. The fields in which the young entrepreneurs are about to venture are quite diverse. Their prospective businesses include a high technology synthetic speech product, herbal and medicinal products, scientific equipment, specialised furniture manufacture, processing cashmere and woollen fibres, a secretarial service bureau, and a designer knitwear business.

The individual award winners are:

Alison Sanders, who plans to produce original woollen goods with “a few surprises.” She says she has been producing high quality knitwear for many years and despite the recent boom of knitwear in New Zealand, believes there is still a need for

fresh innovative ideas and products if markets are to be expanded. Her business, soon to be named Alison Reynolds (her maiden name), is based in Tai Tapu and she sees it providing employment for a number of part-time knitters in the area.

Frazer Monks intends to design and manufacture educational science equipment. He says his experience as a laboratory technician at St Andrew’s College has shown him that much of the scientific equipment used in education at the moment is outdated, unreliable and expensive.

Frazer says there is considerable opportunity for innovative design and marketing to solve many of the equipment problems in today’s teaching laboratories. To this end, he says, he has developed a product that will upgrade an everyday piece of laboratory equipment. For reasons of competition, he cannot say what it is. Providing natural herbal and pharmaceutical products is the field in which Chris Claridge hopes to excel. He has already established a company which is growing and packaging herbal teas successfully, and hopes to expand this. Chris says health products are a growth industry worldwide, and New Zealand is well placed in the sector because of the purity of its resources. He says his herbal products are the only ones supplied in New Zealand that use locally grown materials. Judith Pascoe heads a group, the Canterbury Fibre Company, which is involved in the processing of wool and goat fibres. She says the company has developed a method of extracting kemp (a strong fibre) from mohair that is a world first. For this reason she cannot say how it is done. Judith says the company will continue to process wool as a regular source of income, while it researches further cashmere, dehairing methods on behalf of an unnamed organisation. To set up a secretarial bureau is the goal of Lynn Anderson. She says there

is a need for a specialist service which provides a full range of typing and secretarial sendees.

Lynn says present businesses supply “bits and pieces,” but she aims to have a one-stop place. Longer term goals include a full desk-top publishing service and the opening of two or three branches. Colin Maxwell’s venture is well under way. He has an electronics business which is producing both computer software and hardware for the home computer market. A product he has developed, and hopes to expand with, is a voice synthesiser which he says can be produced here for about half the cost of existing United States models. An innovative approach to everyday furniture is the specialist field of lan. Dawn. He is manufacturing designer furniture in native timber on a one-off basis, and emphasises he is not aiming at the mass production market. “I wouldn’t want to supply furniture for the whole of an hotel, but perhaps I could make a specialist piece for the lobby,” he says. The chief executive of the CDC, Mr Doug Kerr, said previous award winners have set up their businesses successfully, and with little capital outlay. “A feature of all awards so far is that the individuals’ knowledge and expertise provided the main asset of the business, and they devised ways to start a business without large capital outlay. “A measure of the success of the scheme has been that all five recipients of last year’s awards have started trading successfully, with one highflier achieving a $1 million turnover in the year, with plans for $4.5M this year.” Mr Kerr hopes this year’s recipients will be equally successful, and that this will have spinoffs for the region. “It is quite likely these young entrepreneurs will diversify as their businesses develop, and it is this type of drive and enthusiasm that will help generate the future prosperity of Canterbury,” he savs.