2003 Herald
As a child in New Zealand in the 1960s and 70s, I was surrounded by glowing
examples of New Zealand success stories: Fisher & Paykel, Wattie’s, Fletcher and
New Zealand Forest Products to name but a few.
As each of these commercial icons has fallen, with the glowing exception of
Fisher & Paykel, or been taken over by a larger international, New Zealand has
shrunk a little.
The knowledge economy is being touted as the way forward, the saviour of New
Zealand. The Herald reports on examples of success stories from overseas,
including one “expert” who stated that longevity of commercial enterprises is
incumbent upon the desire to cyclically rebuild the entire company.
So far in my life, the strongest examples of New Zealand’s ability to take on
the world and beat it commercially have come from the Dairy industry and Fisher
& Paykel. F & P is still run by a descendant of the original owners, and despite
being uniquely innovative and successful in carving out niche markets, it is
still essentially a company producing electrical appliances, as it was 50 years
ago.
Fonterra still produces dairy products, while remaining owned by the same group
of owners.
There are lots of much smaller examples of New Zealand companies leading the
world, a couple of the well documented ones being Maxwell Winches and Buckley
Systems.
Surely the fact that these companies are leading the world is because they do
not change for the sake of it, they just keep getting better at their core
businesses. Anyone in New Zealand can pick up this attitude. We are good at lots
of things. Let’s get better at what we are good at and worry less about trying
to compete against countries and companies whose budgets give them too big a
head start. The future is not in the Information Revolution/Age, it is in the
past.
Maybe the real moral of the story is in Fonterra’s Mainland Division’s
advertising. Good things take time.