Timaru Entrepreneurs /
The colourful and character-filled world of business owners Tim and Brooke Black
Tim and Brooke Black are excited about living in South Canterbury’s port town, Timaru, seeing it as not just a place of beauty but of opportunity. The driven entrepreneurial couple have two retail stores (with a third about to open as we go to print) and a hospitality business all in southern Stafford Street.
TIMARU COUPLE TIM AND BROOKE BLACK ARE A busy pair, for as well as their retail and hospitality outlets, both have full-time jobs. Brooke is a trained journalist and currently the Editor of The Timaru Herald. Tim has years of work in the wool industry under his belt. In 2014 he started Black & Associates, a wool reclassing business where small lots or part bales of wool are reclassed and packaged into saleable lines ready for scouring or exporting. A passionate advocate for New Zealand wool, Tim has a close working relationship with New Zealand Merino. With parents who raised them with a strong work ethic and a ‘can-do’ attitude, the couple eagerly take on the challenge of running their Stafford Street businesses alongside their day jobs. It is nothing for Brooke to be handling invoices and ordering until midnight. She jokes that ‘when they do sleep, they sleep well’.
Their entry into retail business evolved organically. There was no great master plan. Their store ‘Tuesday’ was the first step, opening just before Christmas 2016. Keen to encourage more businesses in the southern end of town and enliven the area, they opened in the empty retail space under their previous home in the CBD. Brooke recalls, ‘We both had fulltime jobs; we were trying to think of something that would be quite easy. Something that was doable. Something like an after-work hobby really … Our idea was to open it when we came home from work at night and just run it as a night store.’ With a busy takeaway store next door and the Theatre Royal just down the road, there was a sure supply of foot traffic. The queue outside the shop door at Christmas time was probably their first inkling that they may have to rejig their plans. Both Tim and Brooke laugh at their naïveté. ‘After probably six weeks we realised that it wasn’t a night-only store and it wasn’t going to work, so we employed full-time staff and opened full-time.’
It was Tim’s building skills and fondness for upcycling rather than financial outlay that allowed the couple to outfit the store. Brooke has vivid memories of Tim working well into the night building shelving units from rescued landfill materials or materials from neighbouring old buildings. When it came to stocking Tuesday, national and international travels had given them a clear eye for what they liked and what they realised was unavailable in Timaru. The steady demand for their fun, quirky, irreverent, and often risqué products has filled a niche market.
For many people, opening one retail store would be enough, but for Tim and Brooke it wasn’t too long before they jumped at new opportunities. As Brooke says, ‘Tim never sits still for very long.’ While hazy about the dates of the ensuing expansion, the ‘perfect storm’ saw them opening
Hector Black’s Lounge Bar and their second retail store Black & Co almost simultaneously. ‘It wasn’t meant to be like that,’ Tim says, but when the opportunity came to start a business in the heritage-listed old National Bank of New Zealand, the couple’s mutual desire to open a bar meant they simply seized the moment. If they knew what lay ahead, in hindsight they may not have been so keen. While ‘no strangers to a bar’, they quickly discovered there was much to learn about running one and issues with planning and consents were a huge frustration. What they thought would take a few months took a year and a half. In the meantime, the neighbouring property to Tuesday came up for sale and they decided to purchase it and open Black & Co.
Brooke explains, ‘We kept seeing things we really liked and couldn’t fit it into Tuesday – it just didn’t all go together.’ The closure of some local stores and a sense that people in Timaru were missing out on a broader range of quality goods all added to the impetus to open the new store. Black & Co has a beautifully curated range of national and international women’s designer wear, accessories and jewellery, a selection of quality homewares and gifts and a small menswear range. Hector Black’s Lounge Bar has a far more personal story. Hector was Tim’s Jack Russell who went everywhere with him, including to parties and concerts. Tim comments on him
Tim would call himself a collector – with raised eyebrows Brooke argues the toss, and the term ‘hoarder’ is bandied about amidst laughter.
being ‘a bit of a mainstay around town – he’d sit outside some of the bars and wait for people to be ready to go home’. Tim and Brooke wanted to pay homage to Hector. ‘We wanted to make a place that we could make people feel at home. When you’re there you’re in Hector’s home.’
While distinct businesses, themes are carried through all of them – Tim’s passion for New Zealand wool, tweed, all things equestrian, animals, his predilection for vintage items, and taxidermy. Tim would call himself a collector – with raised eyebrows Brooke argues the toss, and the term ‘hoarder’ is bandied about amidst laughter. The décor at Hector Black’s especially reflects his foibles, and enables his love for vintage, and quirkiness to shine. Old leather couches, beautiful old writing desks, a plethora of lamps and photos are juxtaposed with quirky collectors’ pieces and taxidermy. It all creates an inviting relaxed homelike atmosphere. Black & Co is bursting with vintage items for sale in its upstairs rooms – an outlet for Tim’s collecting. New Zealand-made products are well represented with Mount Somers wool blankets just one of the quality items. Tuesday further reflects the vintage aesthetic with old furniture items acting as props to display their wares. Then there is also Tim’s wonderful selection of men’s secondhand tweed jackets for sale in both retail stores. Each space is a testament to the couple’s creativity and sense of fun.
Reflecting over the past few years, Tim and Brooke are full of praise and appreciation for friends, family, and their large and wonderful team of staff. Friends successful in the hospitality sector offered solid advice when they were opening Hector Black’s. Their parents, appreciative of the couple’s vision, were ‘absolutely happy to drop everything and all come here and work around the clock over weekends’. Brooke remembers, ‘There was one Labour Weekend before we opened the bar and everyone, family and friends, came and stayed in Timaru and they helped us – decorating, painting, sanding, building new decks, all sorts of things.’ Tim’s teenage daughters Lucy and Alex have also been able assistants. Recently, Alex has been busy with Tim setting up retail store number three. Tim and Brooke have been humbled too by the support of the Timaru community, especially in lockdown when customers contacted them and offered help and encouraged them not to close.
Despite the impact of Covid preventing overseas trips to trade fairs (Brooke spends many more hours online sourcing new products); delays in the supply chain; and increased freight costs, their commitment to their businesses and Timaru has not wavered. The positive feedback and support from their customers buoys them. The couple’s natural creativity and drive means they are seldom without a new idea. When asked if they have other plans up their sleeves, the couple give nothing away. Regular ‘negotiations’ between the pair decides where their efforts are next directed. Brooke and Tim are keen to see Timaru’s CBD thrive and are willing to invest time and money into ensuring it does.
The couple’s natural creativity and drive means they are seldom without a new idea.