Nick Mowbray
Co-Founder, ZURU
Nick Mowbray is a New Zealand entrepreneur and 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.
The story began with a hot-air balloon. As a schoolboy in Cambridge, Mowbray and his older brother Mat made and sold model balloon kits, an idea that started life as a science-fair project on the family dairy farm. The fledgling business never quite took off in New Zealand, so in the early 2000s the brothers made an audacious bet: with a NZ$20,000 loan from their parents, they moved to China while still in their teens and early twenties, bought an injection-moulding machine and started manufacturing toys themselves.
Their sister, Anna Mowbray, joined soon after and together the three siblings built ZURU into a global force. The company became known for mass-market hits such as Bunch O Balloons, X-Shot, Mini Brands and Rainbocorns, selling across more than 120 countries and ranking among the top toy companies in the world, all built on a foundation of heavy automation and relentless speed to market.
ZURU has since expanded well beyond toys. ZURU Edge moved the company into fast-moving consumer goods, with brands spanning nappies, haircare and wellness; ZURU Tech set out to reinvent how houses are built through robotics and automation; and Rhodes Pet Science took the same approach into pet care. What began as a single product has become a diversified, multi-billion-dollar group.
Mowbray’s contribution has been recognised at home and abroad: he was named EY New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018 and inducted into the World Entrepreneur Hall of Fame. He and his siblings rank among New Zealand’s most successful business figures.
His profile is noteworthy because it is, at heart, a New Zealand story of ambition out of all proportion to its starting point: a farm shed, a borrowed $20,000 and a willingness to back themselves on the other side of the world. ZURU stands as proof that a Kiwi company can take on the biggest players in a global consumer category and win.
Nick features in our look at how New Zealand brands break out globally.
Sources: ZURU · BusinessDesk · Foundr
About this profile
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