News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Tickled pink

Tickled pink

New Zealand advertising agency DDB, creators of the pink hugging monster for Pink Batts insulation, has been rated the world’s best agency in the 6th annual Bestadsontv.com rankings; New Zealand agencies Colenso and Saatchi…

Madonna’s mad for it

Madonna’s mad for it

Wellington-based company “Phil & Ted changed my life,” writes Examiner.com’s Kate Byrd of the New Zealand “stroller gurus”, going on to give ten reasons why she loves her buggy. “I researched double strollers for months….

Flying High

Flying High

Air New Zealand has made a bold move into the world of sustainability, becoming the first commercial airline to fly using an alternative fuel made from the jatropha plant. The airline recently conducted a…

Dining with the Birds

Dining with the Birds

For one month from 9 January until February 2009, in a redwood plantation north of Auckland, between Puhoi and Warkworth, and 10m up a tree, the Yellow House restaurant will serve three-course meals…

Possums Made Good

Possums Made Good

Founder and CEO of fashion label Untouched World Peri Drysdale – who has an MBE for services to manufacturing and export – began selling garments blended fom possum and merino in 1996, later catching…

Networking in California

Networking in California

Scott’s Ferry-raised Victoria Ransom, 32, now based in Silicon Valley, California, has won $450,000 in an international Internet business competition for her design application to be used on social networking site Facebook. Ransom’s company…

Northern Expansion

Northern Expansion

08 December 2008 – Wellington clothing company Icebreaker has engaged a distributor in Germany, Sweden and Norway, having also opened its first Eastern European sales and marketing office in the Czech Republic earlier…

Car of the Century

Car of the Century

Gibbs Technologies founder and CTO New Zealander Alan Gibbs, 70, is profiled on Michigan Live.com where the entrepreneur discusses the never-seen-before capabilities of his three-seat sportscar Aquada, production of the Quadski and his partnership…

Waterborne Cars Are Go

Waterborne Cars Are Go

16 November 2008 – New Zealand entrepreneur Alan Gibbs, 69, has opened an amphibious vehicle engineering and research centre for his firm, Gibbs Technologies in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Gibbs previewed two of his company’s…

Mail Man Has Role in US

Mail Man Has Role in US

Former New Zealand Post CEO and Royal Mail executive deputy chairman Elmar Toime has been appointed to American online postal service Earth Class Mail Corporation’s board of advisors. Toime – who also led the…

Craved in Canada

Craved in Canada

Kathmandu founder and owner of design store Nood, or “New Objects of Desire”, Jan Cameron has opened four stores in British Columbia. Nood carries a range of household and personal products, including designer furniture…

KR on Argentinean Edge

KR on Argentinean Edge

27 October 2008 – Saatchi & Saatchi CEO and Lovemarks instigator Kevin Roberts keynoted HSM’s Buenos Aires management conference alongside Harvard U strategy guru Michael Porter, Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz (Economics) and Muhammad Yunus…

Fonterra’s Melamine Nightmare

Fonterra’s Melamine Nightmare

Criminal contamination of the milk supply chain in China embroiled New Zealandís largest commercial organization Fonterra in a crisis that left four babies dead and 3,000 still in hospital. An estimated 54,000 children were…

In the Hot-seat

In the Hot-seat

New Zealander Geoff Vuleta, co-founder and chief executive of New York-based innovation consultancy company Fahrenheit 212, commutes between the US city, and home to Auckland every 8 weeks. Vuleta discusses his frequent-flyer lifestyle, and…

Tough Gets Going

Tough Gets Going

Sportswear apparel maker Canterbury of New Zealand, which produces the shirts worn by the Scottish Rugby Union team, will this week open its first retail outlet in Europe. Canterbury, which also supplies Glasgow Warriors,…

For the Animals

For the Animals

Since 2005, Auckland-born Briar Simpson has worked in Japan for the Tokyo branch of non-profit organisation Animal Refuge Kansai, where she finds homes for animals and coordinates fundraising and educational programmes for children….

Defender of the Skies

Defender of the Skies

Air New Zealand is aiming to be the cleanest airline on the planet, recently making headlines with fuel-saving and environmentally conscious initiatives including demonstrating a new way of flying an airplane and testing the…

Greenery in Urban London

Greenery in Urban London

New Zealand-born James Fraser founded UK landscape firm Avant Gardener in 1990, which continues to operate from a nursery out of Battersea in London. One of Fraser’s latest projects is profiled in the Telegraph,…

UK Role for Sinclair

UK Role for Sinclair

Former Auckland Airport chief financial officer Robert Sinclair has been appointed chief executive at Bristol International Airport. In Auckland, Sinclair oversaw a four-year investment programme in expansion, including runways, terminals, car parks and roads….

Villa Away from Chateau

Villa Away from Chateau

Auckland entrepreneur Nick Wood sold internet service provider Ihug in 2003 to Perth company iiNet for $80 million and set up Distinctive Holiday Homes (DHH), a luxury destination club with property around the world….

Pests Transformed

Pests Transformed

New Zealand possum fur is being imported by Portland-based company Eco-Luxury which produces throws, cushions and bedspreads, “for all of the luxury and none of the guilt.” On a trip to New Zealand,…

In Sheep Code

In Sheep Code

New Zealand clothing label Icebreaker is enabling its customers to trace their purchased merino garment back to one of the 120 sheep stations where the fibre was grown by entering the individual ‘Baacode’ number…

Weddings on Ice

Weddings on Ice

Auckland-based bar group Minus5 is opening the first ice-lounge in the United States, in Las Vegas, on September 26. Named for the temperature maintained within its 1,200-square-foot main room – 5 degrees Celsius below…

Hill Moves into the US

Hill Moves into the US

Michael Hill International (MHI) has purchased 17 stores in the American cities of Chicago and Missouri for a sum of US$5.5 million (NZ$8.1 million). “Chicago is a good market for a newly arrived retailer,…

Cocktails After Angkor

Cocktails After Angkor

Former Radio New Zealand reporter Dean Williams has turned his talents to the world of hospitality in Cambodia’s popular tourist destination, Siem Reap. According to The Phnom Penh Post: “In September, Williams will open…

Unconventional Movement

Unconventional Movement

New Zealander Grant Harrison, 44, Hutt Valley High School old boy and owner of American health benefits company Humana, one of the largest in the United States, is the man behind bike-share programme

Digging Up the Sandpit

Digging Up the Sandpit

Former Dunedin musterer Ed Mumm moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado and in November 2007 opened the first earthmoving sandpit in the United States, Dig This, where enthusiasts pay top dollar to operate heavy machinery…

Hart’s Net Worth

Hart’s Net Worth

Auckland investor Graeme Hart, 53, owner of the world’s second-largest drink-carton maker, Alcoa Inc. has surpassed both Donald Trump and Sir Richard Branson in the wealth stakes, doubling his bank account over the past…

Snug as a Bug

Snug as a Bug

Merino Kids founder Amie Nilsson designed the award-winning Cocooi Babywrap with biblical swaddling in mind, keeping babies safely on their back and asleep longer. Swaddling creates a slight pressure around the baby’s body that…

Landing in Hospital

Landing in Hospital

New Zealand company Medtral is attracting American medical tourists 7,000 miles across the globe searching for quality non-acute surgical procedures at cheaper rates than their own system is able to offer. Medtral says it…

Jennings Backs Russia

Jennings Backs Russia

Waitara-born Stephen Jennings, CEO of the leading investment bank in Russia and sub-Saharan Africa Renaissance Group, believes that in the coming decades “the world’s largest businesses will be from new world economies and…

Chocolate Carbon Credits

Chocolate Carbon Credits

New Zealand graphic designer Giles Barker and his wife, trained chef Vanessa Kettelwell established confectionary company Bloomsberry & Co in 2001 and already they’ve have had their chocolate bars whipped out “from under…

Running on Jatropha

Running on Jatropha

Air New Zealand and Boeing plan a three-hour test-flight at the end of the year using fuel produced from jatropha, a poisonous tree which grows seeds rich in oil. The airline expects to use…

Corporate Iwi Unite

Corporate Iwi Unite

Divided into four tribes: kea, ruru, tui, and weka, 200 employees of US firm Seagate Technologies face the elements in the mountains above Queenstown in a week-long “mother of all of team-building events”. CEO…

Economic Hardware

Economic Hardware

In 1949, New Zealand engineer and economist Professor William “Bill” Phillips astonished the London School of Economics revealing his “do-it-yourself” creation: an analogue computer model of the workings of the British economy. The Monetary…

Thank Goodness for Spreadable

Thank Goodness for Spreadable

One of the greatest inventions of all time, according to the New Zealand Post, is New Zealand’s spreadable butter, and the Telegraph’s Bee Wilson agrees. “If it weren’t for the New Zealand Dairy Research…

Seaweed Means Fuel

Seaweed Means Fuel

Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, a New Zealand-based company, is likely to be the first of its kind to produce biofuel from large quantities of wild algae. Aquaflow’s chairman Barrie Leay said his company had successfully…

At the Helm of Harrod’s

At the Helm of Harrod’s

Former Wellington business man James McArthur, 48, has been appointed chief executive officer and Group chief of Harrod’s, reporting to chairman Mohamed Al Fayed. A 12-year Gucci Group veteran, McArthur was most recently president…

Feasts in Factories

Feasts in Factories

New Zealander Margot Henderson, sought-after London gourmand and the other half of Arnold & Henderson catering, does not like to use the word ‘simple’ when describing their menus. “It’s more like it…

Virgin’s Cable Guy

Virgin’s Cable Guy

Neil Berkett has been promoted to a permanent role as chief executive at Virgin Media. Berkett took on the job at the cable company as acting chief executive in August last year when Steve…

All for a Chat Show

All for a Chat Show

Twenty-two year old Christchurch design student Nick Lowe wants to raise $1 million on YouTube in the hope of millionaire-status and a spot on Ellen Degeneres’ talk show. This week Lowe passed the $1,000…

Windy Farewell

Windy Farewell

Paddy Gillooly owns a tourism company in New Zealand which takes visitors by jeep or all-terrain bus to the tip of the South Island’s Farewell Spit, one of only two companies permitted the…

Slimming with Rachel

Slimming with Rachel

Model and reality TV show host Rachel Hunter is the face, and figure, of US weight loss brand Slim-Fast. Advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather chose Hunter because she embraced a more realistic body type….

Tips for the Irish

Tips for the Irish

Irish sheep farmers are looking to their New Zealand counterparts for advice on how to make more money tending their flocks. Lincoln University’s Dr John Hickford spoke at two conferences in Kilkenny and Athlone…

Beyond the Ugg

Beyond the Ugg

No longer are New Zealand’s fashion tastes being derided for unbecoming tracksuits and shoes, the local fashion industry is pinning the country on the style map. New Zealand is now home to a vibrant…

Quick Sale

Quick Sale

Two Yorkshire property developers are enthusiastic about the benefits of investing in property in New Zealand; Ian Payling and Dave Rothwell-Wood built the ‘Lemon-Tree house’ on land north of Auckland. Once the sale was…

NZ Director Airs at Super Bowl

NZ Director Airs at Super Bowl

In just 30 seconds, Wellington ad director Paul Middleditch made his mark at this year’s Super Bowl. Sydney-based Middleditch created the NZ$3.4 million one-off slot for Diet Pepsi Max, at his sixth…

New Exec at Opera House

New Exec at Opera House

Sydney’s most famous landmark is now presided over by New Zealander Richard Evans, who last month became chief executive at the Opera House. Among the challenges Evans will face, is raising some NZ$790…

Microsoft’s Gatekeeper

Microsoft’s Gatekeeper

Christopher Liddell, Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft since 2005, and the former senior New Zealand business leader is the architect of Microsoft’s recent $44.6 billion takeover offer for Yahoo. Liddell is now dealing with…

Blogs in Big Business

Blogs in Big Business

Former Aucklander Andy Lark, recently appointed VP of global marketing and communications at Dell, is one of the technology industry’s “Most Influential” communicators according to PR Week. Champion of big business…

Dave Versus Goliath

Dave Versus Goliath

The opening of a new hotel in Christchurch coincided with the launch of a film detailing the unusual story behind its development. Hotel SO is the result of property developer Dave Henderson’s 13-year clash with the…

Tees Please

Tees Please

An NZ couple has launched a line of tasteful tourist tees in Canada. Last year, Lauren McKee and Wynne Pirini left home, and their respective careers in accountancy and construction, to start a creative…

The Post-industrial Revolution

The Post-industrial Revolution

Wellington-based Ponoko is one of a wave of new companies offering personalised product manufacturing services online. Founded by David ten Have and Derek Elley, the Ponoko website lets customers upload designs for cases and enclosures…

Hyperfactory Enters Hyperdrive

Hyperfactory Enters Hyperdrive

Rich Frank, former president of both Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Television Group, has invested in NZ mobile marketing agency The Hyperfactory. He joins 42 Below vodka’s founder and chairman, Geoff Ross and Grant Baker, and Paul…

Chairman of the Internet

Chairman of the Internet

NZ lawyer Peter Dengate Thrush has been named chairman of the Internet’s chief governing body. Dengate Thrush will head the LA-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is viewed as the online version…

B_E_E on Global Rradar

B_E_E on Global Rradar

NZ’s eye-catching B_E_E products featured in global style authority Monocle this month. Based in Auckland, B_E_E (Beauty Engineered for Ever) produces high quality cleaning products that are as easy on the eye as they are on…