Marking 20 years of the Gold Awards
The year is 1998. Te Papa has just opened its doors and Westpac Stadium is a year away from completion.
Wellington’s film industry is starting to take off, with Sir Peter Jackson and Sir Richard Taylor just getting started.
The capital’s IT sector is in its infancy, while the world of manufacturing is rapidly declining.
And amongst all of these happenings, Wellington business owners are feeling largely overlooked and often devalued.
To change that, a team of people put their heads together and decided to establish a business awards to celebrate and acknowledge businesspeople and their organisations.
So in April 1999, the inaugural Wellington Gold Awards were held in the Wellington Foyer of Te Papa.
This year, the awards show will celebrate its 20th anniversary.
Event organisers John Dow and Gayle Page have been on board since the start.
Dow said something needed to be done after an influx of large corporates moved their head offices out of Wellington, to either Auckland or, in some cases, Australia between the late 1980s and late 1990s.
This removed a significant number of well-paid jobs and direct spending with suppliers from the Wellington economy, which impacted on the profitability and sustainability of many local businesses, he said.
‘‘There were very real concerns throughout the business community that unless there were real and genuine efforts made to appreciate, acknowledge, support and value business people and their organisations, that the Wellington regional economy could seriously suffer, jobs would disappear and we could face another recession.’’
As so the Wellington Awards was born.
The first ever awards night was attended by 450 people, and was a ‘‘great success’’.
This success led to The Dominion (later The Dominion Post) Gold newspaper becoming the lead sponsor.
In 2000, the awards night was a sell-out. It was attended by thenPrime Minister Helen Clark. Clark eventually attended eight out of the nine awards nights during her time as prime minister.
Three years later, the gold awards moved to TSB Bank Arena
Supreme winners
to accommodate the increasing demand for attendance, which became consistently about 800 people.
However, the last three have attracted 1000 people.
The Wellington Gold Awards has had nearly 2500 Wellington businesses enter in its 20-year history. More than 16,000 people have attended the awards night.
The awards had ‘‘successfully presented a cohesive and collaborative Wellington regional economy each year’’, Dow said.
‘‘The Gold Awards has mirrored the dynamic economic and business operational and capability changes that have occurred in the past 20 years, particularly the constantly evolving role of technology, some of which has been created in Wellington, such as Xero, and gone out internationally.’’
The 20th annual Wellington Gold Awards will be held on July 5 at TSB Bank Arena. years