The Best Resources To Help Grow Kiwi Businesses

When I think of windy Wellington, my mind is immediately drawn to funky op shops, hipster cafe's and out there art galleries. Unsurprisingly, a boutique, handcrafted peanut butter business, tucked away into a little cobbled corner of Eva Street, fits in seamlessly.

Where most people think of peanut butter as simply a spread that goes really well with jam on a slice of bread, Fix & Fogg have transformed it into something to be experimented with and enjoyed as a spread in its own right. With an array of flavours from dark chocolate, honey, smoke and fire to the newest fruit toast, Fix & Fogg have truly made peanut butter making into an art form. 

Businesses these day spend ridiculous amounts of money on advertising to audiences who just aren't interested and will more often than not, press skip, press the |X| button, report spam, unsubscribe or just keep scrolling. In reality, spam emails and unwanted pop ups are more likely to convince people to not buy a product than they are to pique interest in a product or service - purely from sheer annoyance. 

What if there was a way to incentivise people to actually pay attention to advertisements? Where they could engage with adverts that they were actually interested in, in a way that didn't disrupt a video of a baby goat in pyjamas doing parkour or cause my parents to think I have a gambling/porn addiction due to pop ups from streaming movies. 

I distinctly remember the point in my life where I realised just how much I had taken my mother's cooking for granted.  It was the 3rd week of my second year of university (after having the luxury of being in a catered hall in my first year), it dawned on me that for the rest of my life, I was going to have to think about what I was having for dinner every night, plan out my weeks and do my own grocery shopping.

If you are a New Zealander, sports fan or not, chances are you’ve got a few laughs out of slipping “Boomfa” or “Me oh my I have enjoyed that yes boy” into an Instagram caption or general sentence. While personally not the biggest of sports fans, I do enjoy hearing the occasional Scotty ‘Sumo’ Stevenson spiel on Radio Hauraki or observing the latest Justin Marshall comment being parroted by impressionable young New Zealander’s everywhere. The key takeaway here is that while Scotty and Justin provide quality commentary, sometimes we just want to hear someone that isn’t a stereotypical white, 50-year-old male sports commentator who’s come out of a 30-year cricket career. 

Artificial Intelligence. Words that are becoming increasingly common to hear, yet 10 years ago, was a virtually unknown concept. It is something I frequently read about in the news and Facebook articles in conjunction with people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, yet I'm guilty of having no real understanding of it. So what is this vague and mysterious "Artificial Intelligence"?

 Last week I made the choice between topping up my HOP card or buying bread for my morning toast.

 That's a serious reality for almost all the students in tertiary education, and choices have to be made about your diet, your clothing, your transport and multiple other areas all because the costs of living are much higher than what's possible to earn. 

Niesh was founded on this struggle.

 The month of May was beginning, and with it the NZ Comedy Festival! Finally some world class, live entertainment every night of the week to choose from. What caught my eye initially wasn't the lineup of New Zealand’s greatest comedians, but the sponsor… Flick Electric. Who and what was that? An electricity company? The major sponsor of a comedy festival? Now that's a bit different.

I have mixed memories of school, but one that clearly stands out is I really had no option to learn any financial literacy or skills unless I purposefully chose it as an elective in my senior high school years. And being an energetic, restless teenage boy I instinctively chose P.E over any money based subjects and was restricted to very little financial education. Thankfully, my parents aren't clueless with their funds and taught me a lot but that's not true for a vast majority of children in this country, and this is where Banqer comes into the question. Bridging the huge gap left in students knowledge about anything to do with finances, Banqer provides an incredible platform that acts as an online bank, to teach youth how to manage savings, deal with interest rates and other potentially ‘overlooked' areas of everyday life that are left up to the parents. We had an incredible opportunity to chat with Kendall Flutey, co-founder of the start-up to discuss the ins and outs of this unique and exciting concept.

If you sell goods and services to New Zealand customers, you should know that learning the ins and outs of ecommerce marketing will help you to enjoy higher visitor numbers at your website, as well as more vital conversions. e-commerce in New Zealand must be carried out in accordance with federal laws, so it's important to consider these rules and regulations before putting together a cohesive and effective e-commerce marketing strategy.