Exporter makes most of Wanaka lifestyle

Wanaka businessman Ben Wilson  has launched an  interior design export business, Wanaka Living....
Wanaka businessman Ben Wilson has launched an interior design export business, Wanaka Living. Photo by Marjorie Cook.

After just one day in their Wanaka office, Ben Wilson and his father, Robert Wilson, ditched the suits and ties for a wardrobe that reflected the town's relaxed outdoors lifestyle.

That was the year 2000. Fast forward more than 10 years and Ben Wilson (40) and his partner Amanda Dorset (40) have launched an interior design export business, Wanaka Living.

Ben Wilson is still taking cues from Wanaka's lifestyle to market the fledgling company's designer range of sheepskin products.

The small southern town might seem a strange place for a curly wool rug or cushion to begin a journey to stores in Europe or Asia, but for Ben Wilson it makes perfect sense.

"It doesn't matter where we are based. We choose to live here. There's a little more commuting involved but that's a very small compromise ... It's just a matter of making the most of your opportunities," he said, in an interview last week.

Ben Wilson is a fifth generation exporter and a director of Robert Wilson Ltd, founded by his father in the mid-1990s after he retired from high profile company Wilson Neill.

The family's entrepreneurial streak and sheep and wool industry links can be traced back to Ben Wilson's great-great-grandfather Robert Wilson (1832-99), an Irishman who family say arrived in Australia with half a crown in his pocket in the 1850s.

By 1881, he was an influential business leader and pioneering Otago's frozen meat export trade.

Ben Wilson says his own father also has the knack for "doing things differently".

The present day Robert Wilson has been involved in the venison and seafood industries, the sheep and possum skin trade, tanneries, honey and berryfruit, either through Wilson Neill, on his own account or with other business partners.

In the 1990s, Robert Wilson Ltd set up a tannery in China with associate company, Auskin, and technical director Leroy Parker, a former Dunedin man.

It is this factory that manufactures the new range of products by Wanaka Living.

Ben Wilson honed his own business sense selling dried flowers he picked from a paddock behind his house while studying at Otago University.

He and a friend whose family owned a bakery also did a roaring trade in baked goods.

"We would go to the bakery at the end of the week and collect all the leftover bread, pies and Boston buns and peddle them around the flats in Dunedin.

That was our beer money for the weekend," he said.

He worked for export trading company W.H. Grove and Sons in Auckland for three years after graduating from Otago University with a bachelor of commerce degree and postgraduate diploma in tourism, before returning to Dunedin to work for the family company for a time.

After a two-year stint in London's banking sector, he came home and took up his role at Robert Wilson Ltd.

Wanaka Living employs five staff, including fulltime export management officer Ryohei Shindo, originally from Japan.

Creative expertise in website content or design is contracted in when needed.

Ben Wilson concentrates on export marketing while his father explores importing opportunities.

"My father is always exploring opportunities to a fault, whether it's timber, food, whatever.

There are so many different projects he has been involved in. He has struggled to retire," Ben Wilson said.

Wanaka Living accounts for a small percentage of parent company Robert Wilson Ltd's direct export revenue of about $15 million.

Building brands that leverage off "brand New Zealand" is Ben Wilson's passion.

"The Wanaka Living project began when I visited a large retail customer stocking our more traditional sheepskin products in Tokyo. The problem was that our premium natural sheepskin rugs looked very similar to the cheap synthetic products being sold in the same store.

"We were producing a product which took away the natural character of the wool and had very successfully made the natural fibres look synthetic ... I could see an opportunity to develop a product range which preserved the natural character of New Zealand curly lambskin and add a level of design," he said.

The materials are sourced in New Zealand and processed in China.

"My attitude is that New Zealand should do what it is good at, which is producing the raw material and owning the intellectual property ...

"It is important who is the principal stakeholder in this business. And it is important China does what it is good at, which is manufacturing and investing in that technology so it is producing the best possible quality for them and for New Zealanders," Ben Wilson said.

 

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