Lockdown venture releases the spirit of enterprise.
A sales platform founded to support small businesses has become an online incubator for entrepreneurs. Amanda Cropp reports on the Chooice phenomenon.
Electrician and self-taught 3D printing whiz Ivan Perez gets his quirky planters in front of more than 500,000 potential buyers at the click of a mouse.
He and wife Pamela Perez, who makes terrariums, are among 5600 registered vendors using the Chooice Facebook group and associated e-commerce website to kick-start their first foray into business.
Sarah Colcord launched the New Zealand Made Products Facebook group during lockdown last year to support small businesses, including her own event management company, never envisaging it would morph into an online incubator for thousands of Kiwi entrepreneurs.
‘‘That was definitely one of the social and economic outcomes that we did not anticipate happening.’’
Renamed Chooice, the 549,000-strong membership (70 per cent female) makes it New Zealand’s largest Facebook group, and sales through vendor stores on the website launched last August had surpassed $2 million by the end of May.
Pamela Perez left her job as a preschool teaching assistant in 2019 to set up The Twig, a Christchurch business creating tiny gardens in glass containers, and husband Ivan has largely quit electrical work to make the 3D-printed plastic planters he created to go with her terrariums.
Although they have their own websites and the planters sell worldwide via Etsy, Perez said they will maintain a store on Chooice which accounts for a third of their sales.
‘‘We have been learning as we go, for both of us it’s our first business. We will be forever grateful to Sarah [Colcord] and her team.’’
Colcord said Chooice vendors ranged from outdoor furniture makers to pensioners selling knitting, some seriously building businesses, others operating side hustles, and with a geographic spread reaching as far south as Stewart Island.
For many it is their first experience of e-commerce, which prompted Colcord to set up a vendor academy Facebook group with two staff members dedicated to helping social media novices.
‘‘A lot of people struggle with basics, as in how to post in a Facebook group.’’
Vendors get tips on how to write captions and choose images that will engage viewers, who, as Colcord puts it, ‘‘have the attention span of a goldfish’’.
She says it is gratifying to see people quickly learning how even minor adjustments to posts can score extra hits.
‘‘They want to know how our algorithm works and the best times to post on the group, there’s a lot of education goes on.’’
Nimeesha Odedra, who is in business with her mother Sue selling Sobhna’s curry pastes, pickles and spice mixes, is one of the 438 members of the vendor academy.
She said the benefit of belonging to a virtual community of other small businesses facing similar issues was borne out when there was a shortage of curry paste jars, and another group member messaged with information on where to source them.
Odedra credits New Zealand Made Products and Chooice, where they have a store, with giving them the confidence to turn a hobby selling at farmers markets around Auckland, into a fully fledged online business selling nationally.
‘‘It made us think, ‘Ok, this is a viable business we could make a real go of’.’’
Odedra said their success also rubbed off on other local businesses they used for their branding and business website.
‘‘Instead of me printing labels on my printer, cutting them out with scissors and sticking them on with a glue stick, we needed printed labels.’’
Ex-flight attendant and qualified hairdresser Sherrie Moleta could not face returning to the poor pay and conditions of salon work when Covid-19 took away her flying job, so she set up Messy Bun, styling hair for weddings and special occasions.
She said the initial boost from posting on Chooice had a lasting impact. ‘‘I didn’t know anything about starting or running a business ... I think I’d be maybe halfway to what I am today.’’
The Facebook group and website also proved a saviour for established businesses.
Emma Heke has run Heke Homemade Herbals for seven years, and as a solo mother she ‘‘freaked out’’ when the pandemic wiped out her income from selling at the Nelson market and through gift stores.
Posting on NZ Made Products and later Chooice helped double her stockists to 60 so she could afford to buy two cabins and shift tea-making operations out of her home and into the garden.
‘‘A lot of small businesses feel quite locked out of those big marketplaces such as Trade Me.’’ Sarah Colcord Founder, Chooice
However, she has just exited from Chooice, feeling its focus had changed with more rules and new fees, and while Heke understood the need to monetise the site, ‘‘it doesn’t fit my business model’’.
Colcord said they introduced a $5 monthly membership fee and a 5 per cent success fee for sellers.
Those without a store on the Chooice website pay $10 to post on the Facebook page, and Colcord said a ‘‘give a buck a month’’ campaign aimed to raise $60,000 a month for a new platform ‘‘with all the bells and whistles’’.
When interest in the Facebook page exploded, Colcord looked for mentors to help her take it to the next level, and last year she entered into a partnership with Auckland creative agency Indigo which also runs the Manaaki online advisory forum.
Colcord sees her niche as being the biggest small business marketplace in New Zealand.
‘‘A lot of small businesses feel quite locked out of those big marketplaces such as Trade Me because they don’t feel they can get as much visibility among the larger more sophisticated businesses.
‘‘They feel they’ve lost their voice in those spaces, and it is probably not for them any more.’’