Former Audacious business challenge winner Clay Caird is launching his sports marketing and promotion company in the United States.
Mr Caird won the Audacious competition in 2011 with his promotional headgear product, while a masters of entrepreneurship student at the University of Otago.
The cardboard helmets were based on the protective headgear worn by rugby players and featured each team's colours, and the sponsor's brand on the front.
The headgear was designed to be worn by fans in support of their team and, thereby, to provide exposure for the sponsor.
Since the Audacious success, he has been ''plugging away'' both with New Zealand rugby and also rugby league in Australia.
For the past two and a-half years, he has been living in London and growing the business in the United Kingdom where The Footy Lid, his first product, had featured at rugby test matches at Twickenham.
Speaking from New York yesterday, Mr Caird said his company, Creative Hype Ltd, had expanded its range and now owned intellectual property for 12 product designs in 38 countries.
About one million units had been sold and sports covered now included the likes of baseball, motorsport, motocross, ice hockey and cricket.
''I do feel like we're on the brink of cracking it,'' he said.
Last year, Creative Hype won the ANZ Flying Start business plan competition, which followed success at the Innovate NZ awards where it was highly commended in the marketing and communications category.
His winning business plan for the Flying Start competition focused on taking products to market in the US and the prize package was being used to implement that strategy.
The initial idea for the company came when Mr Caird was studying in Dunedin and there were assignments on how businesses could leverage off the Rugby World Cup being held in New Zealand in 2011.
Returning home to Christchurch during the holidays, his mother suggested he clean out his wardrobe.
He pulled out some rugby headgear from his secondary school days and put it in the ''kept pile'', thinking he might play again one day.
But then he got thinking about the potential for a promotional product and met a man who specialised in making packaging and boxes.
Mr Caird acknowledged he was ''quite naive'' and thought he would get some World Cup orders, make some money and then probably get a job in marketing.
He met some World Cup sponsors and even though ''everyone loved the product'' the reality was that budgets had been spent.
But the feedback was so good that he started ''plugging away'', starting with rugby and the Super 15 and NPC competitions.
It went from being a ''one-hit wonder'' to something he decided was worth pursuing as a business venture.
Moving to the UK had been a good move as it made sense that the business needed to go to a bigger market.
It was also an excuse to travel the world, he said.
Mr Caird believed the potential in the US to be ''huge'', saying the scope of the sports industry was ''quite scary''.
He was looking to shift to New York, saying that was where many of the big companies had their headquarters, and potentially take on staff in the US.
At the moment, it was just himself and his business partner involved with the company.
Despite some offers, he had not taken on any investors.
It was still a start-up business which had grown organically.
The biggest expense had been intellectually property but that had been funded through revenue generated by the business, he said.
Orders were still received in New Zealand and Mr Caird was working with the likes of the Hurricanes and the Blues rugby teams, and also the Warriors.
