Anna Mowbray

Anna Mowbray is a New Zealand entrepreneur and a co-founder of ZURU, the toy and consumer goods company that grew from a Waikato farm shed into one of the largest toymakers in the world.

Mowbray joined the business in 2005, two years after her brothers Nick and Mat had started making model hot-air balloon kits on the family dairy farm near Cambridge. With a NZ$20,000 loan from their parents, the siblings moved to China while still in their teens and early twenties, bought an injection-moulding machine and began manufacturing toys themselves. Anna’s role grew into chief operating officer, running the operational side of a company that expanded into mass-market hits including Bunch O Balloons, X-Shot, Mini Brands and Rainbocorns, selling across more than 120 countries.

ZURU has since diversified well beyond toys. ZURU Edge moved the company into fast-moving consumer goods spanning nappies, haircare and wellness. ZURU Tech set out to reinvent housebuilding through robotics and automation. Rhodes Pet Science took the same approach into pet care. The group has grown into a multi-billion-dollar operation and the Mowbray siblings rank among New Zealand’s most successful business figures.

Mowbray has since left ZURU, taking what she has described as a “significant cash out”, and in 2023 launched Zeil, a New Zealand-based job marketplace designed as an app-first, social-media-style interface for employers and jobseekers.

Mowbray’s profile is noteworthy because she helped build one of the very few New Zealand companies to compete at the top of a global consumer category and has since channelled that experience into a new venture: a reminder that the most interesting founders rarely stop at one company.

Anna features in our look at how New Zealand brands break out globally.

Sources: Wikipedia · The Denizen · ZURU