Business Stories
Stories about New Zealand businesses, startups and entrepreneurs building something worth noticing.
Top5.nz: The Solar Quote Spreadsheet That Became a Rankings Site
Jan Dunlop works in digital marketing and still ended up building a spreadsheet to choose a solar installer. Top5.nz is that spreadsheet, opened up to everyone: local businesses ranked on what their customers actually said, with no way to buy a spot.
Wedding Vendors and the New Zealand wedding suppliers list you can trust
You can find a wedding photographer before lunch. Trusting the list you found them on is another matter. How Wedding Vendors tries to fix that, and what sits beside it.
The Mowbray Family Net Worth: Inside the Zuru Fortune (2026)
Three siblings from Cambridge turned a $20,000 loan into a NZ$20 billion fortune and the top spot on the 2026 Rich List. This is how the Mowbrays built Zuru.
Built Here, Sold There: Inside New Zealand’s Game Studios
A New Zealander made one of the biggest games of the decade, walked away from it, and came home to build a studio in Dunedin. His story is the whole country’s games industry in miniature: build something the world wants, then decide whether to keep it or sell it.
Charleez Chicken & Chips: The National Brand With No Stores of Its Own
Drive through provincial New Zealand and you will pass the Charleez sign in a dairy, a superette, a service station, a café or a bakery. None of those shops belongs to Charleez. That is the whole idea.
How Graeme Hart Made His Money and Became New Zealand's Richest Man
He left school at sixteen and became the wealthiest New Zealander who has ever lived. Graeme Hart made his fortune buying dull, essential businesses that the rest of the market had stopped paying attention to.
Off the Map: The Kiwi Businesses Google Barely Shows
The good local operators have not vanished. They are still busy, still the first name a local gives you. They have just become hard to find for anyone who is not already a local.
OCC Apparel: The Ethical Apparel and Merchandise Partner for New Zealand Brands
Buying one ethical tee is easy. Buying five hundred, and proving the label holds up, is a different job. OCC Apparel has spent twenty-two years, and a careful set of brand partnerships, learning to do exactly that.
Allbirds: The Kiwi Wool Shoe That Took On the World
A wool trainer from a Kickstarter, built on New Zealand merino and a Kiwi footballer’s idea, became a six billion dollar Wall Street company. Then it had to learn the harder half of the sustainability lesson.
Who is Les Mills? How an Auckland Olympian's Gym Became a Global Brand
Les Mills was the Auckland Olympian who opened a gym in 1968. He died on 29 June 2026, aged 91. The global brand that carries his name is what his family built from that room.
Made Everywhere but Here: New Zealand's Quiet Billionaires
New Zealand's largest fortunes were built offshore by its most private people. What that says about the country depends on how you read the silence.
Control, Not Scale: Six New Zealand Women Who Redefined Success
The default measure of success is scale. Six NZ women defined it as control instead, from building an empire to keeping a label deliberately small.
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