Flying Start Business Plan Prize Ceremony

  • Maurice Williamson
Small Business

Introduction

I am very pleased to be a part of today’s ceremony for the winners of the Flying Start Business Plan competition.

Latest demographics

As we all know,small businesses are vital to our economy.  They are the life‑blood of New Zealand.  Their success is our success.

As Minister of Statistics, I want to quickly share with you some of the very latest data we have on small businesses. 

The government defines small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as businesses with less than 20 employees.

  • 97% of enterprises in New Zealand are SMEs
  • Over 500,000 Kiwis are employed by SMEs
  • SME owners are mostly men (62%) and mostly aged between 35-59 years (69%)
  • However, female SME owners have a slightly higher survival rate. 93.1% of businesses started by women in 2009 survived into 2010, compared to 92.6% for men.

We want to see more businesses with real potential for growth survive.  One way we can help them is to make it easy for them to plan ahead, because research has shown time and time again there’s a clear link between planning and success.

Importance of business planning

That’s where this competition and business.govt.nz come in. A key objective of the competition was to encourage more business planning - the cornerstone of successful enterprise.  It’s not easy for SMEs to step out of their busy lives to do this, but there’s lots of help available, such as business.govt.nz, the NZTE-funded Regional Business Partner Network, and local banking advisors. 

Business planning is the most searched for topic on business.govt.nz, and the most popular topic leading people to business.govt.nz.  Businesses want help to plan – this competition was about letting more people know where to go for that help and advice.

Since business.govt.nz launched the business plan competition on 27 April, over 570 people have entered from every region in the country.  More importantly, there have been over 11,000 visits to the competition pages on business.govt.nz during this time.  The Flying Start Business Plan competition has helped put the wealth of online tools and resources on business.govt at the small business owners’ fingertips.

Acknowledgments

I want to acknowledge the successful partnership between business.govt.nz and NTZE’s Regional Business Partner Network, which helped run and promote the competition.  Stage 1 was judged locally in the regions by those partners.

The Supreme winner and the ANZ Exporter prize winner will be supported and offered free help and advice to give them the best chance of success.  

I also want to acknowledge the competition’s sponsors: Gold sponsor: ANZ;   Silver sponsors: Lane Neave and hairylemon / Munted Digital;   Bronze sponsors: NZBusiness Magazine and Stellaris.

Winner

And now to the winner of the Supreme Award.  There were some fantastic businesses which entered the Flying Start business competition. However, there was one business that the judges felt had earned the Supreme Award.

Their product is a leader in the safety market and is very innovative. They have a strong business model with a great team of people who all complement each other in the value they add to the business. The judges were particularly impressed with their understanding of their target customers, their accurate and robust financials and the unique way they have promoted their product. They have expanded the core demand for their products, which is testament to the quality and the knowledge of parallel markets. I am sure that their business is ready to go to the next level and winning the Supreme Award will ensure they have the best support to take on the world.

I am very pleased to award the Supreme Award to Kiwi Ideas Company, maker of the ‘SAFE EYES’ un-foggable goggles.   

Kiwi Ideas Company has been selling the SAFE-EYES mesh goggles in New Zealand for five years and exporting in small volumes to the UK, Canada, Australia and Chile.  They are now looking to form a strategic alliance with a worldwide manufacturing/distribution company and increase their market share.

Would you please welcome our winner, Phil and Janette Hall from the Kiwi Ideas Company.