Mr Thom and friend Chris Brun are the owners of design, screen printing and embroidery business The Print Room which has grown from a two-person operation to employing seven full-time staff in Kaikorai Valley.
It supplies branded hospitality uniforms, sportswear, street wear and school-leavers apparel to customers throughout New Zealand and a workwear range was recently added.
A recent outlay of $250,000 in equipment - a Japanese-made embroidery machine, and an automated screen print carousel from Illinois which increased screen printing capacity by a factor of 10 - was set to help grow the business, including export to Australia.
The two young businessmen have been friends since their primary school days in Central Otago. Before The Print Room, they were both involved with Moodie Tuesday Clothing, which had now been put ''a little bit on the back-burner'' while they focused on their latest venture.
In his second year studying at the University of Otago, Mr Thom started printing T-shirts featuring his art, selling them from his flat. The Moodie Tuesday business kept building and he decided to take it more seriously, with Mr Brun then getting involved as a business partner.
The Print Room was born from approaches by people in the business community and sports team asking them to print their gear, Mr Thom said.
At that time, they were not really offering a printing service but as it became apparent there was increasing demand for it, they decided to ''give it a crack'' themselves.
Initially, it was run under Moodie Tuesday. They decided to set up a separate business three years ago.
Their vision, from the outset, was always to be operating a business on a national scale and also international.
There was a focus now on Australia, initially targeting New Zealand clients in Australia and shipping products ''across the Ditch''.
Mr Thom said the pair's backgrounds complemented each other - Mr Brun came from quite a practical background, having worked as a builder, while he came from a design and fashion aspect. Combined, they knew what people wanted to wear and they had created products that had sold well for their own brand.
They tried to bring their design sense into everything they did, seeing a gap in the market for that.
Every day, there were multiple new jobs and everything moved quickly and that pace was something that Mr Thom particularly enjoyed. ''There's a lot going on which I think we thrive on.''
In the fashion industry, designers could be working quite a long way ahead and sometimes they did not see the result of their work come through until a lot later.
Now working on a five to 10 day job turnaround, it was ''cool'' to see an idea come to fruition in a short space of time. There was also the scale of the work they were doing.
It was a young team at The Print Room, aged between 21 and 32, and additional staff such as school-leavers were brought in for particularly busy times.
When it came to staff, Mr Thom acknowledged there had been a lot to learn. For him, delegating was a big one as it was something he had never had to previously do.
They had ''amazing'' staff and they only brought people on board who they thought would really add value to their business. It was quite cool to have a young team and that energy fitted their brand as well, he said.
The business could be based anywhere but they had chosen to stay in Dunedin, where there were low overheads, good staff and a good lifestyle.
There was ''something pretty special'' about the city, especially in the last few years with the art and creative side ''coming to the fore'', he said.
