Waikato Business News | January 12, 2024

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2 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS JANUARY 2024 Editor Roy Pilott 027 450 0115 News Mary Anne Gill 021 705 213 Viv Posselt 027 233 7686 Jeremy Smith 022 317 9499 CONTACTS editor@goodlocal.nz maryanne@goodlocal.nz viv@goodlocal.nz jeremy@goodlocal.nz Advertising Director Janine Davy janine@goodlocal.nz 027 287 0005 Owner David Mackenzie david@goodlocal.nz Office 07 827 0005 admin@goodlocal.nz Website wbn.co.nz Readers’ contributions of articles and letters are welcome. Publication of contributions are entirely at the discretion of editorial staff and may be edited. Contributions will only be considered for publication when accompanied by the author’s full name, residential address, and telephone number. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the publishers. Waikato Business News is published by Good Local Media Limited. Also publishers of Runga, Mockers booked in New Zealand music icon Bic Runga, Prima Facie, The Mockers, Jazmine Mary, Ridiculusmus Theatre, NZ Opera and Tom Sainsbury are just a few of the big name artists and shows featured in the Hamilton Arts Festival next month. More than 1200 artists involved in music, theatre, dance, comedy and musical theatre are represented across 46 ticketed events from February 23 to March 3. Runga will headline the event, performing on the Rhododendron Lawn accompanied by a live band. The singer-songwriter, who has been inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame, will be 48 by then. She is best known for seven times platinum Hamilton Arts Festival headline act Bic Runga. Photo: Tom Grut. album Drive, released in 1997 and spawning top-selling songs such as Sway. She followed that with Beautiful Collision which went 11-times platinum and produced Get Some Sleep, Something Good and Listening for the Weather. She will be supported by Mount Maunganui’s Georgia Lines, who won breakthrough artist at the New Zealand Music Awards last year and was nominated for Best Pop Artist alongside Lorde and Benee. Eighties new-wave rockers The Mockers supported by Rikki Morris will celebrate 40 years at the festival since the release of their massive hit Forever Tuesday Morning. There is a return for the Sunset Symphony which will take place on the first Saturday with orchestral music provided by the Trust Waikato Symphony Orchestra. The Hamilton Arts Festival is regarded as the largest regional arts festival in New Zealand with its unique point of difference being the Hamilton Gardens. Welcome home CONTINUED “This will enable a lot of affordable housing in the Waikato. “To those who had had the guts to buy a place here, especially those who have taken on the leasehold model, it’s a bit scary I know but it’s a proven formula and we know it works,” said Southwick. “We’re very proud of what we’ve done here. To see eight families shift in, it really means something and I feel very privileged to be part of it.” “Peake Mews is an example of what’s possible when affordability, security and community converge. We don’t want to lose momentum and are keen to speak with anyone who has an interest in being part of the solution to this enormous problem,” Perry told The News. • More photos page 15. Support act Georgia Lines. Photo: Supplied. FROM PREVIOUS PAGE Simon Perry chair of the Brian Perry Charitable Trust with Peake Mews neighbour Pete Moore. This newspaper is subject to NZ Media Council procedures. A complaint must first be directed in writing, within one month of publication, to the editor’s email address. If not satisfied with the response, the complaint may be referred to the Media Council P O Box 10-879, The Terrace, Wellington 6143. Or use the online complaint form at www.mediacouncil.org.nz Please include copies of the article and all correspondence with the publication. Hamilton City Council’s Blair Bowcott, left, with Bridge Housing trustee Leonard Gardner of Foster Construction and Cambridge architect Antanas Procuta. Tim van de Molen Your MP for Waikato Backing Waikato Businesses Tim.vandeMolenMP@parliament.govt.nz 0800 GET TIM (0800 438 846) SUBSCRIBE NOW... …and receive a copy, posted directly to you, every month. Price is $119.40 + GST for a 12-month paid in advance subscription (equivalent of $9.95 + GST per month) Authorised by Tim van de Molen, Parliament Buildings, Wellington. To subscribe email admin@goodlocal.nz
JANUARY 2024 Briefs… Good warning A recent warning to local authorities by the Auditor General about the double digit rate increases proposed – in Hamilton 25.5 per cent and Waipā 14.8 per cent – could be an issue of governance, says Waikato Chamber of Commerce chief executive Don Good in his recent mail out to members. Pet projects will need to be dumped or put on the bonfire in favour of core functions, he says. New dealership Hamilton-founded Ebbett Group has this month opened a new Great Wall Motors pop-up dealership in Pukekohe. Ebbett Group – now based in Te Rapa - was founded in Hamilton’s Hood St in 1928 by Alf Ebbett, later joined by his brother Ron. The group represents 25 car brands at dealerships nationwide. Fixing up Earthquake strengthening is underway at the former Duke St Cambridge home of Inspired by 2 Florist to make way for a new tenant. Among those completing the work earlier this week were Titan Construction’s Potiki Tupaea, left, and managing director Logan Den Hertog. Papal knight Prominent Waikato businessman Paul Barnett will be conferred with the Papal Order of Saint Sylvester - one of five Papal knighthoods - at the Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Hamilton on January 16. It is typically awarded to recognise and reward members of the laity for active service in the church.. George Bettle’s farewell The commercial chapter of George Bettle’s career was over the day he shaved off his beard. The founding guru of Hamilton advertising agency Bettle and Associates had his bushy grey beard and blue glasses on in the morning of Friday December 1 but then turned up for his retirement event later that night without them both. The 52-year-old chuckles at the reaction while sitting in his 15th floor Wellington apartment, where he and wife Emma now live, having sold their Maungakawa property near Cambridge a couple of years ago. “We’ve got a view right down the barrel of the harbour,” he says as he turns to look at it and then comments on the Dick Frizzell print of the Four Square man on the wall which hung in Bettle’s office for years. Bettle is now non-executive chair of Bettle and Associates, the advertising agency he founded in 2002. Then he had been working for Walker Advertising in Auckland and was headhunted to work with former Hamilton mayor Michael Redman at Grey Advertising heading the fledgling digital division. Grey had branches in Auckland, Wellington and Hamilton and Bettle was seconded to Hamilton to work on the Economic Development Forum’s strategy on how to attract businesses to the Waikato. “I came down to give them a hand and started to believe my own copy and thought ‘this is a pretty good little economy’.” When Redman left the agency so too did many of his Hamilton WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS 3 Taking it on the chin clients, so Bettle’s options were to either move with the multinational to Sydney or Singapore. Then when Grey decided to shut the doors in Hamilton, Bettle offered to buy the agency agreeing a delayed deal on April 1, 2001. “I said to them ‘You send me down for six months as general manager of Hamilton, if I like what I see I agree to pay the price we just agreed, not whatever I turn it into in the six months, I’m there, you don’t get a double hit’. It was an awesome deal for me.” Bettle turned the agency around and 10 years later he went “mental” trying to take on the world, setting up an office in Australia. “It wasn’t very much fun, and it wasn’t very profitable.” Bettle found himself managing people instead of writing strategy, which is what he loved. “We got quite big. We had big national clients, but the agency model is when you lose one, you lose a lot of people. And I didn’t like that boom and bust.” Flying under the radar was Bettle’s community and philanthropic partnerships from K’aute Pasifika to Hospice Waikato but in his private life, he was often an anonymous donor. He put in a succession plan in place appointing Will Peart, who had worked for Bettle as account director on the Ihug account but then gone to Australia to work at agencies. Adam Lurman, who Bettle employed years earlier on a scholarship straight out of Wintec’s Succession planning: George Bettle, now chair of Bettle and Associates, with from left, managing director Will Peart and creative director Adam Lurman. Photo: Supplied. View from the top: George Bettle in the office of his Wellington apartment. Photo: Supplied. third year and who then left to go to Tauranga, came back as creative director. Both returned as Bettle had moved into the Riverbank Lane offices in Hamilton the agency still works out of today where it employs 17 people and maintains a healthy client base. “Probably one of the most rewarding things is actually having young guys with lots of talent go away and see the world and then come back.” In 2020, as part of an exit strategy, Bettle sold them a shareholding in the business and told them he wanted to ease out within five years. “I said ‘Let’s make it not about me, let’s make it about Will and Adam’. I was quite happy in the background and there was an ownership model going through that didn’t rely on me.” One of Bettle’s clients was Swedish farm machinery and equipment company DeLaval. The Hamilton company had been DeLaval’s global agency for nearly a decade and he had the opportunity to redo its 10 year strategy. “It was a fantastic opportunity and an awesome project. I wanted to get that done, get it implemented, lock it away. It was really rewarding, really challenging. It felt very much like a full stop. That’s about as good as it gets. I don’t think I could surpass that.” By Mary Anne Gill Bettle finished that work on November 1 and left the agency a month later where he turned up to his farewell dinner beardless. “I thought I better mark this and so I shaved it off for the first time in 10 years. It was terrifying, my dad started appearing in the mirror.” Reaction from his family was mixed. Wife Emily, who is the co-founder of School Kit, a Hamilton-based education company that offers resource kits and learning experiences to teachers, had lobbied hard for him to keep it. Daughters Maggie, 25, and Sam, 22, were on opposite sides. In Wellington, Bettle takes turns picking up his six-year-old nephew from school and a friend’s child from daycare, getting out on his e-bike – cycling is so easy in the capital, he says - and swimming in the harbour where he recently got out as far as the Baring Head lighthouse. “It will be just a gross admission and a lack of imagination from me if I can’t find something to do. “I’m sure I will be full of plans and things, but I just want to give myself a little time to chill out. “I think genuinely the commercial chapter of my life is over. I’ve proved to myself I can do it, I can front globally with the best of them. It’s a challenge I feel I’ve met, and I don’t feel I need to do it again.” Time will tell. Procuta Associates Urban + Architecture 07 839 6521 www.pauaarchitects.co.nz PŌHUTUKAWA HOUSE, WAIHI BEACH
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Waikato Business News | January 12, 2024

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