The Idealog Guide to Weightless Exports

Idealog Guide to
Weightless
Exporting
HOW TO TAKE YOUR IDEAS TO THE WORLD WITHOUT
HAVING TO PACK THEM UP AND SHIP THEM OFF

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2011 / IDEALOG / 87

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GUIDE TO WEIGHTLESS EXPORTING

Contents
90 96 Why are you Weightless
What is
banging on about this? Exporting
Weightless 97 Creative licensing The term ‘weightless
Exporting? FOR beginners exporting’ has been
floating around for a
98 Banking 102 while, flitting in and out
of other discussions
on Weightless about innovation and
Exporting

103
US and commercialisation. So
we figured it was time
Foreigners –
younger, cheaper
and better than you
them to nail that sucker to the
wall, because it’s vital
to the future of New
108 It’s a big Zealand – and to anyone
Our man 104

world who lives here and wants
in China after all to earn more than a farm
worker’s wage.
Making it in 110 Making it sing in 114 New ideas
109
Malaysia Singapore in old Europe

115 116 Keeping it Kiwi, but not
just Kiwi, or too Kiwi In association with Export New Zealand
and proudly brought to you by:

120

124 How do I get on
126 Apple and
the Apps
revolution
‘the Google’?
Does weightless 128 Everywhere you go,
127
mean treading always take the
lightly? profits with you

Idealog Guide to
Weightless Exporting

Weightless success

What is FORMWAY’S LIFE CHAIR WAS
DESIGNED AND DEVELOPED IN

Weightless
NEW ZEALAND, BUT SHIFTED
TO PRODUCTION IN THE
NORTHERN HEMISPHERE ON

Exporting? ITS WAY TO SELLING MORE
THAN ONE MILLION UNITS.

Put simply, weightless exporting is the business
of selling ideas raw, usually by licensing or
some sort of contractual agreement, instead
of making and shipping products from here
in New Zealand, or hiring service staff and
consultants to work with clients

ICEBREAKER’S WEIGHTLESS WOOLLIES
Icebreaker’s clothing is built on a primary production platform
– it makes snazzy outdoorwear out of wool. It started out as
a purely weighted product, with wool raised in New Zealand,
clothes made here, and then shipped all over the world. But like
some big ol’ balloon, as it’s been blown up larger and larger, it’s
become more and more weightless. The manufacturing has
been moved to Shanghai, and the emphasis placed on design
from the outset has become a major tool for adding value to
a business that now employs more than 1,000 people and
buys about a ﬁfth of New Zealand’s merino wool.
Increasingly, what it’s really exporting is an idea, as chief
executive Jeremy Moon puts it: “It’s about our relationship to
nature, and to each other. And it’s about new ideas and doing
things differently, being an authentic natural choice in an age of
synthetics, and seeing how far we can develop this simple idea.”
But most importantly Icebreaker has maintained its core
connection with New Zealand and the wool industry its whole
story is based on. Most recently, this has been expressed in
its Baacode system, which customers can use to trace their
Grenville Main garment back to the farm it was grown on.

90 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ


THE DAIRY COLLECTIVE –
HOW TO MAKE
YOGHURT TRAVEL
Fresh yoghurt is not known
for keeping for long periods
of time. When Ofer Shenhav
and Angus Allan of
Auckland-based The Dairy
Collective wanted to go
offshore, they could have
frozen up batches and
shipped them, but they may
have ended up being some of
the most expensive dairy
produce in history and not as
fresh as they once were.
Instead they shipped the
recipe out to the UK, got
the yoghurt made there,
and started stocking the
▲

shelves of big players like
Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and
Ocado. Crucially, they not
only sold the system, process
MARK ZUCKERBERG – THE WEIGHTLESS BILLIONAIRE and the component parts of
The jaw-dropping appeal of Mark Zuckerberg’s meteoric rise to billionaire status is partly about the intellectual property –
the weightless way in which Facebook was originally created using just a laptop and an internet their special way of making
connection – in other words, how weightless its global spread has been. Facebook now gets more yoghurt – but they also took
trafﬁc than Google in the US. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world. the brand over there as well.


Idealog Guide to

Peter Salmon

THENEXTPLAYS.COM –
SUCCESS ON THE CARDS
When I first encountered
NextPlays, it was a bunch of
ideas on cards being touted by
social entrepreneur Peter
Salmon from his Wellington-
based outfit Fische Consulting
like he was the world’s first
designer conjurer. Described
by the company as “part
research, part collaborative
workshops, part prototyping
labs” the NextPlay system
brings together 70 case
studies or ‘plays’ from around
the world, each showing one
process the company
concerned has used to grab EverEdge IP CEO Paul Adams and senior VP, operations, Edward Scott.
a little more sustainable
market share. Users can
analyse these ‘plays’ in CRUSHING THE COMPETITION
Weightless success several different ways. One
approach takes examples EverEdge IP’s experiences in licensing the Crushpak
from the point of view of crushable plastic food pottle demonstrates how the need
LES MILLS SET UP HIS FIRST a list of key sustainable for scale can all add up.
innovation criteria. These Adams says, “We prepared the commercialisation strategy
GYM IN 1968. IT COULD HAVE include Authenticate, and got ready to take it to market. It became apparent very
Engage, Go Long, Loops, quickly that a single factory in the US could produce about
SO EASILY HAVE BECOME JUST Mixed, Needs Based, and a million of these units a day and that’s one of dozens of
Simplify. Another allows you these factories around the US.
A SINECURE FOR A RETIRING to choose from the same “In New Zealand the annual consumption of this product
case studies in light of is about six million units, so a week’s worth of US production
ATHLETE. INSTEAD, UNDER Doblin’s Ten Types of from one factory could supply New Zealand for a year.
Innovation to see where the “So even assuming we had been able to secure the capital
THE GUIDANCE OF HIS SON innovation occurred, in to build a factory to supply at the rate required to supply the
Finance, Process, Offering or US, and assuming we could ship those units to LA and land
PHILLIP, IT HAS SPAWNED Delivery. Then the result of them there, and assuming we do that every single day, day in
each play is catergorised as day out, we still wouldn’t have had the distribution to move a
A WORLD-FAMOUS RANGE OF Refined, New and Shifted. million a day. So there was no way that technology was going
The system has been used for to be commercialised in a weighted way.”
GROUP FITNESS CLASSES THAT Air New Zealand, Kraft, Coca EverEdge IP licensed Crushpak and Adams says it’s since
Cola, Shell as well as a social been “phenomenally successful”.
IS NOW LICENSED TO 14,000 project called ‘Sociedades Del “It’s generating millions of dollars of royalties annual and
Futuro’ in Mexico. So it looks those revenues are 90 percent margin.
GYMS WORLDWIDE like it might be a good way to “So you can stuff things into containers and compete toe
pick a winner. The only to toe with much better resourced competitors in their home
‘weight’ involved is the markets, or you can use a licensing business model and
trainer and the training achieve extremely high-margin revenue. To me the choice is
materials: thenextplays.com. both stark and obvious.”

92 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ

Want to hear a story?
Once upon a time, not so long ago, two Kiwi guys had a crazy
idea. ‘Let’s reinvent reading,’ they said. And so they did

It’s exciting, as an advisor,
to see your client launching
successfully and progressing
IN BRIEF
from having an initial prototype Booktrack was
launched by Mark and
and an idea to turning it Paul Cameron in
August, with the help
into something that can be of AJ Park

downloaded from the app store It represents the
ultimate in the
weightless exporting
model – highly
efﬁcient, and with
global reach

CONTACT
To ﬁnd out more,
contact Hadleigh
Brown,
09 353 8216,
hadleigh.brown@
ajpark.com,
www.ajpark.com

Researcher Kelly Sheerin's work could
potentially be used to assist the
NZRU, Super 14 and the ACC.

(L-R) Paul Cameron, Brooke Geahan, Derek Handley and Mark Cameron launched Booktrack in August. IP firm AJ Park was instrumental in ensuring the technology
was protected and appropriately commercialised, using its well-established relationships with overseas associates to help file patent applications around the world.

Facebook director of global
creative solutions (and Kiwi
expat) Mark D’Arcy is one of
a collection of big names
backing the venture.

Idealog Guide to

Why are you
banging on about this?
Closing the knowledge gap in New Zealand’s economy

DON’T PAY THE POSTAGE
As New Zealand is the last bus stop on the planet, shipping is costly and comes with an inherent,
if relatively small, risk of it not getting there. Sending a 20-foot container to the UK can set you
back a couple of thousand dollars, and that’s without factoring in the handling costs. Then it can
take about a month to get to its destination. This can play havoc with your forward planning and
cash flow, especially in situations when somebody wants small amounts of products fast, an even
more costly business per unit than sending whole container loads. With rising fuel costs and the
threat of the imposition of carbon taxing, shipping isn’t going to get cheaper anytime soon.

VALUE OF THE WEIGHTLESS ECONOMY PER CAPITA:
YOU TAKE THE SUPPLY
ROAD, AND I’LL TAKE NEW ZEALAND US SWEDEN
THE KNOW ROAD $33 $279 $499
SINGAPORE FINLAND
You can commercialise
$263 $322
anything through
three models:

SCALE IT UP
In the world of tangible as opposed to digital products, one
Sell the
of the immediate challenges facing us is that even if our
intellectual property
manufacturing were competitively priced on the global market,
which it’s not, we wouldn’t have enough capacity to make
License the enough stuff for the biggest markets in the world. It’s one thing
intellectual property to make a product in New Zealand, it’s another to set up the
infrastructure that a market, like the US, demands.
Adams says, “Often you get very successful products but they
Incorporate the then get an order from overseas and it’s 10, 100 or 1,000 times
technology into the company’s ability to fulfil that order.” And you can’t wait
a product, make until you get the big order before tackling the problem.
it and ship it “The market abhors a vacuum. If there’s a great new product
out there but the original creator can’t supply it, someone else
Adams says: “Our de facto will. We’ve seen many examples where New Zealand products
commercialisation has been were very successful here, the firm tried to supply the market
the third [manufacturing] from New Zealand, simply wasn’t able to and other, better
and it has been not especially resourced players from overseas jumped in and took the market.”
successful. The net One way to get around this is to create things that can be
commercial output is scaled up much more easily. You can’t build a new factory
remarkably low. Maybe overnight, but you might be able to find one somewhere on the
we need to rethink the model planet that can get you what you need pretty quickly. Having a
we’re using?” digital product also helps.
AJ Park’s Mark Hargreaves says, “If you build your model around
weightless exporting, your ability to scale is greater. Software as
a service is hugely scalable; you can grow quite rapidly.”

96 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ


Creative licensing
FOR beginners
It’s easy to think that the licensing exists in a
parallel universe only inhabited by legal eagles, THE PROCESS
but it’s crucial to maximise your returns Spend time understanding the market
you are trying to plug into

Match your intellectual property
protection to your commercialisation
strategy – you can’t earn royalties
effectively from places where your
IP is not protected

Mark Hargreaves Spend a lot of time working on how the
product gets to the market offshore and
ONCE MORE INTO to the end user – is there government
BREACH, DEAR FRIENDS
procurement going on?
It’s madness to do all
that negotiating to license a
product if you don’t bother to Understand what each party wants out of
follow up to make sure they’re
the license, not just how much money you
paying you what they owe.
Hargreaves says, “You always
want and whether they can pay it
have audit provisions in your
license, but they are more Understand that it takes a long time
honoured in the breach than
– it is not uncommon for licensing
anything else. Often the audit
is not carried out, and when negotiations to take a year or more.
they are carried out, more The more complex the technology and
often than not the licensee the more important to the licensee, the
has been under-reporting longer it will take to get a result
the royalties. So you do need
to keep an eye on them.” As
anyone who runs a small Don’t underestimate the work.
business will tell you, don’t Don’t think that’s it’s always necessarily
count on the big corporates going to be easy
to be the best payers. The
license for a product that
may be your life and soul If the license you are offering is going to
might end up stuffed in a be part of a large portfolio for the licensee,
bottom draw somewhere in
how will it ﬁt in their existing lines? Do
MegaCorp HQ and seldom
seen again. Stay in touch with
they have the same expectations for it, or
your licensees or risk losing is it just one of many products they are
touch with your product. licensing and they are not going to push
it that hard?


Idealog Guide to

Banking
on Weightless
Exporting
Banks can be gun-shy when you start talking
about intangible investments. But banks here are
increasingly willing to take a look at propositions
that don’t necessarily fit into a shipping container

IS THERE A
CLEAR REVENUE
STREAM FOR
THE FUTURE?

COMMERCIALISATION IS WHAT COUNTS
There is no shortage of incredible ideas out there. And there’s
huge demand for innovative products. So how do you make them meet?

IDEA P RO D U C T R E A L I T Y S T RO N G I P NO-ONE SUSTAINABLE
POSITION COPIES YOU MARGINS
COMMERCIALISATION
SMEs, ‘PINCH POINT’
investors, STRONG IP
CRIs,
universities, SUPPLY
OF IDEAS
DEMAND FOR
INNOVATION
Corporates, VS
research PRODUCTS governments
WEAK IP
institutes,
private R&D
WEAK IP NO-ONE EVERYONE
POSITION COPIES YOU COPIES YOU
INABILITY TO R I S K AV E R S I O N
MOV E TOWA R D S D I S C O U R AG E S
C O M M E RC I A L I S AT I O N MOV I NG TOWA R D S
C O M M E RC I A L I S AT I O N
P RO D U C T I S P RO D U C T I S
Source: EverEdge IP A FA I L U R E A SUCCESS

98 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ

Bringing breakfast
to the world
With its unique formulations, ongoing product
development and speed to market, Kiwi cereal
maker Smartfoods is in a bowl of its own

THE NUMBERS
In the ﬁnancial year to
March 2011,
Smartfoods’ exports
accounted for
12 percent of total
turnover. In the next
ﬁnancial year, they
will account for 24
percent. That’s 143
percent growth across
its total
export business.
Exports for Asia are
growing ahead of that
at an average of more
than 670 percent over
the same year.

CONTACT
New Zealand Trade
and Enterprise,
www.nzte.govt.nz

Smartfoods founders Justin Hall and Vicky Taylor credit New Zealand Trade and Enterprise for helping their business grow, expand, and connect with other Kiwi exporters.

Idealog Guide to

US and
them There are two types of companies in the US – the quick and the dead

Duncan Catanach

You can make very
good money in the US,
but you have to be well
prepared. You have to be
on your game – because
everybody else is

102 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ


NEW ZEALAND COMPANIES Foreigners –
DOING HEALTHY
BUSINESS IN THE US
younger, cheaper
ORION HEALTH – YOURSELF OR SOMEONE LIKE YOU
In the 16 years since Orion Health was founded, the firm has
and better than you
gone from a five-person startup to New Zealand’s largest
software company. Its specialist healthcare programs might
one day save your life, or the life of a loved one. They may
It used to be the case that having your product
already have done so. Your doctor almost certainly uses made somewhere else was driven by the
Orion products, as does your local hospital every time a new
patient arrives. potential for saving money. That maxim
Orion’s Concerto Portal has helped sweep away centuries
of staggering down hospital corridors clutching dog-eared
doesn’t necessarily apply anymore
paper files. It allows medical staff access to a single view of
their patients’ computerised admissions records, blood test,
x-ray results and more.
The firm now has turnover of around $60 million and 500 A
staff, with offices in the US, UK, Spain and Australia, and has
just announced it is recruiting another 100.
MANUFACTURING
WORKER’S AVERAGE
B2P – TESTING THE WATERS MONTHLY WAGE
B2P’s range of products sniff out serious bacterial infection
in water in less than two hours, and can confirm water is
drinkable in about 14. Current testing takes between 22
and 72 hours.
Influential US magazine Popular Science said: “The
Thermos-size MicroMagic device lets inspectors check for
E. coli on site and at every stage of food production and
preparation and it produces results in 45 minutes to 10
hours.”
This is valuable: waterborne disease is estimated to NEW ZEALAND
cost the US healthcare system about US$100 billion. The
company has set up a US company to penetrate the market.
US$2,740
EMENDO – CAPACITY PLANNING SOFTWARE
Any fan of TV hospital dramas knows how hard it is to get
the right people and equipment into the right places in
hospitals at the right time. This is what Emendo CapPlan
does, and apparently it does it pretty well. According to
the firm Bedford NHS Trust in the United Kingdom saved CHINA
US$500,000 in the first four months of using the software. US$580
Since 2007 their saving in inpatient areas alone has averaged
approximately US$1.2 million a year.

MATAKINA INTERNATIONAL – SIMPLY THE BREAST
Matakina’s Volpara breast screening software has proved
itself as a more accurate and lower cost alternative to
existing systems in the US. The company now has deals with
two major breast screening hardware suppliers to use the
INDIA
software – a potentially US$4.3 billion market overall. US$119


Idealog Guide to

It’s a big
world after all
Nearly half a billion people speak English around the world, depending on who you
ask (and how slowly and loudly you ask them). That leaves a few billion adults who
don’t, and some of them have cash in their pockets you might like to have in yours

Hans Frauenlob

ASIA IS A
RICH WEB OF
CULTURAL
COMPLEXITIES
AND
ADVERTISERS
NEED TO
HAVE A DEEP
UNDERSTANDING
OF THE CULTURE
OF EACH
COUNTRY THEY
MARKET TO

104 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ

Knowledge is power
Thanks to its global banking network, BNZ is helping Power System
Consultants take its specialist knowledge to the world

IN BRIEF
For a company like Power BNZ offers PSC a full
range of day-to-day
Systems Consultants, which banking services such

is truly global, it all has to as term loans,
overdrafts, company
work. PSC needs to be able credit cards, internet
banking and FX online
to do business anywhere in for making payments
overseas.
the world at any time, and link BNZ also assisted
back into what's happening PSC with strategic
planning, advice on
in New Zealand board structure, and
transactional reviews.
As part of the NAB
group, BNZ has
banking links
worldwide.

CONTACT
To ﬁnd out more
about BNZ Partners,
please contact
0800 273 916
www.bnz.co.nz

(L-R) BNZ managing partner Phil Bennett and Power Systems Consultants co-founder Tony Armstrong. The partnership has been vital to PSC's global growth.

Idealog Guide to

Our man
in China
‘Made in China’ has built up a whole load of assumptions, most of
CHINA,
which are wrong. We spoke to Patrick English, consul general, trade
THE BIG COUNTRY commissioner, Guangzhou, to get the real deal on making ideas
IF YOU WERE ONE into reality in the most populous country in the world. He’s been
IN A MILLION IN visiting China for 22 years and living there for 11, so he should know
CHINA, THERE
WOULD BE 1,300
PEOPLE JUST
LIKE YOU. CHINA
WILL SOON BE
THE NUMBER
ONE ENGLISH-
SPEAKING
COUNTRY IN
THE WORLD

108 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ


Making it in
Malaysia
In case you have any images
NOT CHEAP IN CHINA of Malaysia as all palm trees
GETTING THE snorkelling, check this out: the
latest World Economic Forum
RIGHT ADVICE
Global Competitiveness
ON CHINA IS Report placed Malaysia
IMPORTANT, 21st, four slots ahead of
Patrick English
AND NOT CHEAP. New Zealand at number 25
ACCORDING
TO RECENT bout a quarter of the country’s GDP comes from
manufacturing, spurred on as companies look
REPORTS, beyond China as an entry point to Asia. Meanwhile,
Malaysia is trying to increase the value of its
LANZATECH manufacturing, and move into the service sector. The Malaysia-
New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, which came into force last
SPENT $509,000 year, suggests they are keen for Kiwis to get involved.
Meanwhile, the middle class is busy burgeoning in Malaysia,
ON AN just as it is all over Asia, and increasing their consumption of
protein and their interest in brand-driven sophisticated shopping
EMPLOYEE OF experiences. So there’s a market there for the right products
too. IP protection is in a relatively advanced state, and there’s a
ITS INVESTOR, growing uptake of social media, with businesses using Facebook
to build brands and even business-to-business networks.
QIMING All this means Fiona Acheson, trade commissioner, Malaysia,
Indonesia and Brunei, reckons there are good opportunities out
VENTURE there for the right propositions.
“Like doing business in New Zealand, the most successful
PARTNERS, TO businesses tend to be those that view business as an ongoing
relationship in which you invest time, money and support,”
HELP WITH she says. “New Zealand products and services aren’t necessarily
top of mind for Malaysian businesses or investors looking
ALL MATTERS for opportunities.
“Assumptions that things will be similar to New Zealand or
RELATING TO other developed markets tend to be a stumbling block.”
Victoria University’s Kim Fam says, “Malaysia and Turkey
THE CHINESE are both Islamic countries, but Malaysia is more lenient when
it comes to advertising alcohol. This is because Malaysia is a
MARKET multicultural country that needs to maintain social and cultural
NZTE has 11 staff in three ofﬁces in China. For more NZTE harmony with its various ethnic groups, including Malay,
advice on trading in China, visit bit.ly/ojKshf. Chinese and Indian.”


Idealog Guide to

Making it sing in WHAT TO KEEP IN MIND
When looking at selling a

Singapore
technology product, ensure
that it is one of the first
few countries to have seen
the product or service.
If it is a medical device,
obtaining FDA approval or
EU certification or having
been tested and piloted in
Australia could potentially
Tucked away at the bottom of Malaysia, the Singapore powerhouse speed up its market entry.
Consumers in Singapore are
is becoming a key staging post for New Zealand companies looking used to the flash imagery
from markets such as the
to promote their ideas and innovation out to Asia and beyond US and Europe, so
New Zealand products
should have the same level
of sophistication if not
more. Singapore is a very
brand-conscious society.
Brands sell – and they
sell very well.

THE ASIA OPPORTUNITY
Some of the key trends
across Asia that say, yep,
we will pay innovative
countries to do cool
stuff for us:
Increasing disposable
Ziena Jalil
incomes

Growing focus on health
and wellness

Growing appetite for
Western/imported
products

An emphasis on
convenience
LINKEDINDONESIA Brand consciousness
LANZATECH – NOBODY SAID IT WAS EASY Indonesia has just Ageing population
Lanzatech’s team of biologists and process design engineers spend their days in a state-of-the- become the world’s (in some markets such
art lab facility in Auckland cooking up patented processes and microbes. Among other things, second largest user of as Singapore)
they convert carbon monoxide-containing gases from coal, steel manufacturing, oil refining, Facebook with 35
chemical production, as well as recycled waste, into valuable fuel and chemical products. million users Increasing focus on halal
Over the past couple of years, the firm has entered partnerships with industrial corporations certification in Malaysia,
The United Indonesia and Brunei (and
across Asia, including Chinese steelmaker Baosteel, with which it is working to commercialise
States Embassy in Singapore, to some extent)
its technology, IndianOil, China’s Henan Coal and Chemical Industrial Corporation and Mitsui
Jakarta has about
& Co, part of Japan’s Mitsui conglomerate. Interest in knowing the
143,000 friends
Revenues on licensing deals are just starting to trickle in, but the company reported a net loss origins of a product
of $14.6 million in the 12 months ended March 31, almost twice the loss of $8.4 million a year About 12 percent of
the world’s tweets Growing focus on
earlier, according to financial statements lodged with the Companies Office.
stem from Indonesia food safety
Chief executive Jennifer Holmgren has said the firm won’t break even until the end of 2013.

110 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ

KnowlEdge here. TM

Millions of tons of water. Harnessed by concrete and steel. And knowledge.

EVEREDGE IP
EverEdge IP is a world leader in technology and intellectual property commercialisation. ®
We understand the power of knowledge. We know how to harness that power to drive
growth and create wealth. This is commercialisation. This is our edge.
The Commercialisation Specialists.
Talk to us today about how we can help you convert innovation into international success.
info@everedgeip.com | (09) 489 2331 | www.everedgeip.com

On display
Napier-based Future Products Group – the power behind
the McCafé cabinetry – has experienced untold business
growth. TelstraClear has been there all the way

The company’s jump in IN BRIEF
If you’re exporting,
Skyping to facilitate its export you’ll need to be well
connected to the
activity led to an increase in globe. TelstraClear is a

data usage – so TelstraClear subsidiary of Telstra,
the world’s ﬁfth largest
recommended an upgrade telecommunications
company. Its network
extends worldwide,
which means
TelstraClear can offer
great leverage,
particularly to
companies that
operate at a trans-
Tasman level.

CONTACT
To speak to a
TelstraClear business
advisor, call 0508
BUSINESS (287 463)
www.telstraclear.co.
nz/business

TelstraClear advisor Nigel Hulena with FPG founder Jared Vaughan, McCafé has since gone global after being trialled in Australasia, and FPG has reaped the benefits. There are at least
who says the telco’s assistance has been invaluable. 1,300 McCafés in operation now – this one’s in Germany.

FPG expanded into Australia in the 1990s with custom-made retail and food display units, and McDonald’s contracted them to supply cabinetry for its McCafé concept stores.

Idealog Guide to

New ideas TOP TIPS FOR SELLING
TO THE EUROPEANS

in old Europe Scoliège says that before
deciding to enter a new
market and on the strategy
for that market any New
Zealand company should:
Europe has hit the business headlines recently for all of Have a good understanding

the wrong reasons, but the credit crisis doesn’t mean that of the market. Have one
senior New Zealander from
every European is skint just yet – and there are a lot of them your team in country for
several months or link up
with the right* local partner,
agent, reseller or distributor.
Ideally, do both.

Sell a solution, not a
technology, especially
when communicating to
the end user of the product
directly. Engineers will like
talking technology, while
the purchasing, marketing
or ﬁnance directors want
solutions that relate to their
objectives and problems.
Marcus Scoliège
Be persistence and patient.
A good commercial
relationship is not built in
one or in two meetings. Both
commercial partners and
customers want to see that
you are committed to the
market and that they can trust
you to still be there in three
years’ time. Appearing quickly
without good preparation to
then withdraw again can hurt
your image more than taking
your time and entering when
you are ready.

Know that cultures differ.
The main points of a German
customer might be very
different from those of, say,
the Australian customer,
and therefore the beneﬁt to
them and the positioning
might vary a lot.

*The wrong one will
cost you money and time, and
cause you severe frustration
and embarrassment

114 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ


Time to get
New Zealand
out from under You don’t need to set up

the cloud a factory, you don’t need
to invest in plant and
equipment, you don’t need
to get expensive finance
Innovation in New Zealand is sometimes
treated like a capital offense. Here’s why or establish extensive
distribution channels

Mark Hargreaves

TO BE THE
BEST, WORK
WITH THE
BEST. HOW
CAN YOU SOAR
LIKE AN EAGLE
IF YOU’RE
SURROUNDED
BY TURKEYS?


Idealog Guide to

Keeping it Kiwi, but not
just Kiwi, or too Kiwi
DNA’s Grenville Main is a man who knows how to sell Kiwi stuff abroad.
He warns weightless exporters that leveraging off of our strong New
Zealand identity is one thing, but leaning on it is another thing altogether

THE CHALLENGES OF BRANDING WHILE WEIGHTLESS
Your brand captures and communicates the uniqueness of
the idea you’re selling. But there are some challenges: there
can be less physical product to stick things to, both literally
and metaphorically; it can be more challenging to centrally
control your brand if you are not in direct control of production;
conversely, it can be easier to control all branding elements in a Grenville Main says while the Kiwi attitude factor and ‘Kiwi on the edge hoo-ha’ holds a degree of allure,
digital environment, and your customers will expect you to do so. New Zealand needs to aim at something else entirely: to get recognised as a design engine.

116 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ

WE HELP TAKE
KIWI BUSINESS
TO THE WORLD.

Designing customer experience

AT WE IDENTIFY AND EXAMINE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ISSUES. AT WE DELIVER ON THAT THINKING.

In vino veritas
Two homegrown vineyard managers are on the verge of transforming
viticulture around the world, thanks to a little help from our friends

IN BRIEF
EverEdge IP helps
innovators make
money from ideas. It
guides clients through
the commercialisation
process, from start to
ﬁnish. It’s also
independent of the
patent attorney
industry and provides
objective, insightful
and robust advice
around if and how to
commercialise
technology. The
EverEdge IP team has
been there, done that
– two thirds of
company revenue still
comes from
commercialising its
own technologies, so
its advice is pragmatic
and deal orientated.
CONTACT
Paul Adams, EverEdge
IP,
09 489 2331,
p.adams@everedgeip.
com,
www.everedgeip.com

Researcher Kelly Sheerin's work could
potentially be used to assist the
NZRU, Super 14 and the ACC.

Klima founders Marcus Wickham and Nigel George were astounded when they first saw their highly successful pruning mechanism in action. It’s taken off since then, with German licence
partner ERO Weinbau on board and licence agreements being negotiated around the world. EverEdge IP played a huge part in the company’s successful commercialisation.

Wickham says EverEdge IP guided Klima through the whole commercialisation process – and that if they’d done what they thought was the right thing, they’d be in ‘all
sorts of strife right now’. EverEdge IP CEO Paul Adams says failure often happens because the commercialisation process is mismanaged, not because an idea is terrible.

Idealog Guide to

Business
AT THE speed of light
Businesses don’t come more weightless than digital businesses, but
they do have to be treated every bit as seriously as any other business –
and they come with their own special set of challenges

The
weightless
nature
of digital
business
means if you
can get it
going with
just a laptop
and a smart
idea, so can
a lot of other
people

120 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ


Rod Drury, Sam Morgan and Sir Stephen Tindall are doing the groundwork for a new era in New Zealand connectivity.


Ready to fly? DNA’S RULES
When it comes to exporting our great ideas, location FOR EXPORTING
SUCCESS
is irrelevant – and New Zealand companies could get A concept or model
that’s worked in one
airborne faster with a lighter strategy from the very start market won’t
necessarily work
perfectly somewhere
else. You may have
to ﬁne-tune it.
Focus on anything you
can build IP around,
deliver better value
with, deliver ‘in
market’ because it’s
light, and you can
prove customers in
that market will pay
for.
Consider adding a
pinch of Kiwi attitude,
create a brand that
will have customer
relevance, and drive
resonance – design a
service experience
that’s all about user
needs and goals.
Stand out – you may
beat the tyranny of
distance, but you’ll
always have to work
to beat the tyranny
of indifference.
Certain sectors are
more ripe because
they are light: science
and technology, IT,
education, ﬁlm,
furniture and food.

CONTACT
Grenville Main,
09 489 2331 or
09 375 1592,
grenville.main
@dna.co.nz, or Donna
Maxwell, donna.
maxwell@dna.co.nz,
www.dna.co.nz

DNA head Grenville Main says client Trilogy Skincare is a great example of Epic Beer broke with convention in creating a beer with far more hops than your
a business with strong IP and an ability to capitalise on the weightless model. average beer, and as a result is reaping the rewards, with attention from US brewers.

DNA helped BNZ take its Out Of The Box (OOTB) concept from Kiwi shores to Australia, where it lived on – very successfully – in another incarnation for parent company NAB.

Idealog Guide to

How do I get on
‘the Google’?
Social media for beginners – in other words, pretty much everybody

GEEKS,
MAKING US
ALL MORE
SOCIABLE
SINCE...

ONLINE SOCIAL
NETWORKING, AS
OPPOSED TO THE
AGELESS VERSION
OF CHATTING TO PEOPLE
OR GOING TO ROTARY,
HAS NOT BEEN AROUND
FOR VERY LONG

2003
MYSPACE
2004
FACEBOOK
2005
YOUTUBE
2006
TWITTER

124 / IDEALOG.CO.NZ

The Idealog Guide to Weightless Exports

The Idealog Guide to Weightless Exports

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The Idealog Guide to Weightless Exports