Launched in lockdown: 3000 companies
The Covid-19 lockdown has brought out Kiwis’ entrepreneurial spirit, with more than 3100 new businesses signing up to the Companies Register since April.
Ka¯piti Coaster Elise Niu registered her new company Lychee & Co, and shifted and changed her business during the lockdown.
The personal trainer closed her gym when the country moved into Covid-19 alert level 4, but she adapted by offering online sessions.
More than 2000 people from around New Zealand and Australia joined her free online sessions.
Post-lockdown the demand is still there, and she’ll be moving into a paid subscription service soon.
The first few days of lockdown where tough and a few ‘‘tears shed’’, but she Zoomed with her six staff members — who she was able to keep employed thanks to the wage subsidy — and together they were able to come up with an online training programme.
‘‘It’s the ever-evolving way of doing business now,’’ she said.
‘‘We are still keeping our head above water [and] staying super positive, but also having the drive to want to keep people moving, happy, sweating and doing all these things that we do at our gym.’’
Niu was also due to move her gym to a new premises, but having the support of both ‘‘amazing’’ landlords during lockdown made lockdown easier.
The downtime at home also allowed her to register and launch her new ‘‘mama brand’’ Lychee &
Co, a maternity active-wear business, specialising in high-waisted pants.
It grew from an idea scribbled on a napkin 16 months ago with business partner Emma Goldsmith while sharing mojitos in Fiji.
The idea came from their own experiences of being physically active expectant mothers.
‘‘We just talked about what was available to us when we were pregnant and how we were keeping active. There wasn’t much for us back then,’’ she said.
‘‘At our gym there’s lots of primal movements. We’re crawling around on the floor, we’re climbing up walls, we’re upside down and [sometimes] our tops fly up. So we wanted to create a solution.’’
In the last 16 months, the duo designed patterns, sourced fabric suppliers and manufacturers in China. The first shipment arrived during lockdown. The website was put up and orders have started to come in.
The duo have invested ‘‘tens of thousands’’ of dollars into the new businesses, but Niu said it was worth it. ‘‘It’s been an up and down adventure ... but it’s been beautiful to see all the support around this time,’’ she said.
‘‘The stock arrived because China had opened up, our website was ready. So we thought ‘we’ve got nothing to lose by launching now’.
‘‘Let’s just do it. Let’s just put it out there and see what happens.’’
The lockdown enabled Niu to prioritise what was important to her – family and her new business.
‘‘As soon as that [pre-Covid] busy life is taken away from you ... you really get to know yourself,’’ she said. ‘‘We prioritised Lychee at this time because we had the time to do so. We are both busy mums.’’
Lockdown has also taught her to not delay what she wants to achieve.
‘‘Don’t hold back because ... we now know that with Covid, things can just be taken out of your hands at any time,’’ she said.
‘‘We live by that now ... appreciating each day we have this freedom.’’
Economist and strategist Benje Patterson has been crunching the numbers. While the number of new companies being registered is down from April 2019, he said it was encouraging to see New Zealanders building new businesses in the wake of a crisis.
‘‘Many people ... were looking at the world a little bit differently and realising that demand patterns are going to be changing somewhat,’’ Patterson said. ‘‘We were in a state of change. It’s an opportunity for the entrepreneur.
‘‘When people were stuck in their houses, they put that time to productive use.’’
Raising capital for a new venture, and looking at brick and mortar options was difficult during lockdown, but there was an upside to that, Patterson said. ‘‘On the other side, the opportunity cost of people’s time wasn’t as high, so people were able to dedicate themselves to thinking about these things and getting it off the ground,’’ he said.
The most popular types of new businesses being registered were in professional, technical or scientific services, construction, retail and real estate. ‘‘We are likely to see a surprising amount of entrepreneurial activity. Some of the best business ideas come out of these sorts of situations,’’ Patterson said. ‘‘Some businesses will undoubtedly fail, some will never grow to be particularly large, but there will be some ... that in a few years from now will be big and important companies to New Zealand.’’