About this time last year, we came up with a rather crazy idea. This is the Made From New Zealand story. Why we did it and how.
You probably picked it up on Waitangi Day 2007; where in California about 1000 Kiwi’s got together to build a giant silver fern on Santa Monica Beach.
They came from far and wide. From Texas and Niagra Falls. From Los Angeles, and Aotearoa. The fern, built out of sand – but made out of tee shirts – was as long as a football field and nearly half as wide.
It was, as Hilary Barry from 3 News described, ‘New Zealand’s biggest business card’.
You might have seen it on the television. Certainly the millions of Americans who watched ABC and Fox News that night did.
So why do it?
Well, in the last year we’ve spoken to hundreds of New Zealand companies and manufacturers who were looking for a way to make the most of their unique Kiwi DNA. And for lots of them this was proving a bit tricky.
Obviously things that aren’t made in New Zealand can’t be called made in New Zealand, and quite right too.
But what about things that are dreamt up here, and yet made somewhere else? Or stuff that is partly made here, and partly made somewhere else?
Well, you get the point. So, after a bit of a think, we came up with the idea that we called ‘Made From New Zealand’. Of course an idea isn’t much use, unless something is done about it.
And that’s where the tee shirt came in. We made exactly 10,517 of these shirts, because that’s the distance between New Zealand and California.
Each one of these shirts contains a magic thread from one of Sir Edmund Hillary’s climbing socks. We spun it with a kilometre of fine Merino wool, and wove it into each and every shirt, to represent the Kiwi DNA.
The thinking was; we’d sell the tee shirts and build a bloody big fern, right smack in the middle of a beach, in the biggest media market in the world. Then, if enough Kiwi companies were interested, we’d build them an online network.
It would offer free profile pages, free networking, and free e-commerce set up. Well, as it turned out, heaps of companies were keen on the idea, so building the network is what we’re doing right now.
In the meantime, you can be a part of the Made From New Zealand team simply by buying one of our limited edition tee shirts.
Wear it with pride.