Toys story: A case of ‘relentless’ innovation
Billionaire Mowbray trio sitting on top of toy world, but it hasn't always been that way. Susan Edmunds reports.
Atoy business that started in a shed on a Waikato farm in 2004 is now one of the biggest in the world – producing bootyshaking llamas, rainbocorns and huge bunches of water balloons for kids all over the world.
Its turnover last year topped $850 million and it now has 5500 staff in its toy business.
Although Zuru is better known as the provider of thousands of kids’ birthday presents, some of its most rapid growth is now coming from other parts of the retail environment, including nappies, haircare, vitamins, skincare and pet food.
Zuru also operates a consumer business, Zuru Edge, which describes itself as delivering ‘‘disruptive brands in big, stodgy consumer goods categories’’. Recently, it’s made big strides into a range of other product categories.
Zuru’s Rascal + Friends nappy brand will expand into 24 markets around the world this year. Its Monday haircare range will go into the United States at the end of the year, as well as Tesco and Boots outlets in the United
Kingdom. It has partnered with
Nood, a new pet food brand, to launch internationally.
Chief executive Nick
Mowbray said Zuru was now the seventh-largest toy company in the US and that experience had given it a crash course in all the basics required to dive into a range of other products.
‘‘Kids’ tastes change every six months, more or less, so you’re constantly changing products, running at a pace most industries can’t imagine.’’
He said he was interested in the ability to create new, disruptive brands using data. Consumers were looking for something different, were sceptical of big brands, and wanted something with a unique story.
The data now available allowed new products to be targeted to a very specific audience when required. ‘‘The use of data offers the ability to build a brand more quickly...We can leverage our core competency to build brands with a 10-year view.’’
Brett O’Riley, chief executive of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, said Zuru had developed a way of innovating that could be applied across a range of areas, where the business saw market opportunities. ‘‘That’s fascinating to me, that a great innovative company has that capacity where it effectively becomes a process rather than just about a product.’’
He said the Zuru team was similar to Peter Beck at Rocketlab, ‘‘relentlessly innovative’’. He said Zuru could be a case study for other New Zealand businesses as they shook off the impact of Covid-19.
Many United States businesses had become successful as spin-offs of larger entities, he said.
University of Auckland Business School senior