Tell your story to reel in customers

Iwas in Lower Hutt over Labour Weekend. Not entirely by choice (which, having grown up there, could be a strong contender for its town slogan), but due to weather. I’d planned to fly myself from Auckland down to an aviation event in Ashburton, but while I was stopped in Wellington for the night to see my mum, a stonking northerly sprung up, cancelling the event and rendering any thoughts of onwards travel by light aircraft somewhere between foolish and terminal.

While Wellington’s southerly is no friend of umbrella-clutching office workers, it’s the northerly you really have to look out for, at least near the airport. The Wellington sign on the hillside has its last two letters artfully blown away not by a southerly, but a northerly.

It was a gale northerly that nearly had the 25-metre orange Zephyrometer tapping cars on the roof a few years back.

The wind, of course, appears courtesy of Cook Strait. Take a half-decent westerly and funnel it through a relatively small gap between two mountainous islands and you have a recipe for gales, turbulence and delayed trips to Ashburton.

Which is why, instead of swapping flying stories with likeminded aeroplane geeks, I found myself shopping for fish with my mum in Lower Hutt.

The place she goes to is like any other fish shop, but with one memorable difference. On the wall behind the counter is a row of framed photos of the boats that catch the fish out in Cook Strait.

The boats are very small, and the waves they’re fishing in are very big (if you’re picturing this, make the boats even smaller and the waves even bigger). Most of the pictures, as far as I can tell, were taken in exactly the kind of northerly gale that was keeping me on the ground.

Looking at those pictures, you know that the warehou, blue moki or grouper for sale aren’t just fillets in a tray; they’re hard-won treasure, brought to shore by people putting their lives on the line in awful conditions just so we can have something nice for dinner.

Looking at those pictures, I know I’m not just the customer at the end of a corporate supply chain. The hands wrapping my fish today probably touched the hands of whoever caught it yesterday. Their son or daughter could well be out the back filleting.

Looking at those pictures, I don’t care so much that I can get fish down the road at the supermarket for a few bucks less. And that’s the value of selling local.

As a small business owner, you’re part of a community – and that’s a story that’s hard for a corporation to tell. While they’re answerable to shareholders from who knows where, the money spent in your business goes to your staff and your family, then mostly back to your neighbourhood.

Telling this story has always been important. As we emerge – hopefully for good – from the shadow of Covid-19, it’s become essential. New Zealand’s economic recovery has been driven not by people wanting low prices or cheap imported stuff; it’s been fuelled by the generosity and patriotism of Kiwis wanting to support other Kiwis.

Local sells. Whether it’s your products, your location, your staff or the story of how you started your business, now’s the time to make sure your customers hear it. So wave that flag. Just make sure it’s tied on properly if a Wellington northerly springs up.

As a small business owner, you’re part of a community – and that’s a story that’s hard for a corporation to tell.