Raincoats on the road to exporting
NZTE Bright Magazine May/June 2007

Let it pour. Olivia Southon, 8, is never short of a raincoat – these days she has thousands to choose from. But when she first started school, her mum, Anna Southon, went looking for a raincoat that would keep Olivia dry – and safe on the roads at the same time. She discovered that the raincoats were all black or navy, making a child almost invisible in the rain and gloom. So Anna Southon hit on the idea of manufacturing road-safe raincoats for children based on the high-visibility safety gear worn by road workers. In 2004 she founded Geared New Zealand with her mother Monica Telfer and they began work on a unisex range of Roadworks raincoats with “fluoro” green panels and reflective strips. The raincoats are designed in New Zealand, manufactured in Qingdao, China, and the relationship is managed through an agent in Hong Kong. Anna looked at manufacturing them here, but the resulting price would have been out of reach of many families. “Simply, it would have cost more to make them here in New Zealand – and we sell them for $55,” she says.

From February 2006 to February 2007 the company grew 280 percent; now, success in the domestic market will bring some changes. Anna Believes exporting is the logical next step for the business, and she hopes to be ramping up overseas shipments within 18 months, with the United Kingdom and Australia as potential targets. ‘The UK is quite a safety conscious market already.” Southon says. “They have quite a lot of walking school buses.”

Geared has made some sales to the United Kingdom and Ireland through internet purchases – but in order to create a concerted export plan, Anna says the company may need to come up with a new business model. At present, 60 percent of sales are through schools and fundraisers.

Anna has taken part in New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s Exporter Education Programme and has decided that market research is the next step to cracking overseas markets. “It probably feels a little bit overwhelming until you have done it. I think it’s having a plan and doing it, one step at a time.”
 
Penny Harding