Aotea founder taps curiosity to win at Ma¯ori business awards
Growing up on Aotea Great Barrier Island where he was close to nature, living with his grandparents in a house with no electricity and a woodburner for cooking and heating water has inspired awardwinning Māori business leader Tama Toki.
The 31-year-old founded Aotea, which makes skincare products on the island influenced by traditional Māori herbal remedies using locally grown mānuka, kawakawa, harakeke and kūmarahou, and is developing a renewable energy sharing system which he hopes to eventually take to the mainland.
Last night, Toki (Ngāti Rehua, Ngāti Wai, Ngāpuhi) was the recipient of two Ngā Taumata Rau Aotearoa Māori Business Leaders Awards from the University of Auckland Business School.
Toki received the Te tohu mō te Kaiārahi Rakahinonga Māori: Māori Entrepreneurial Leader Award, while his business received the Te tohu mō te Whakatairanga i te Kete Aronui i te ao Pakihi Kaitiaki Business Leader Award for its environmentally sustainable outcomes.
Unlike many on the island who didn’t attend high school but studied by correspondence, Toki shifted to Auckland with his family as a teenager to attend Auckland Grammar School, where he became head boy. Aotea now supports scholarships for rangatahi Māori on the island to give them the same opportunity.
Toki says he felt a sense of responsibility to help his people and went on to study law, but changed tack about halfway through, deciding instead to build a business on the island that was tūturu Māori. It employs about 15 people.
Aotea has a flagship store in Commercial Bay in Auckland and its products are distributed through Japan and Hong Kong and to boutique retailers in Australia, North America and Europe.
Toki grew up amongst the bush in a Māori community in the north of the island where he learnt a lot about traditional remedies from his grandmother, which led him to start Aotea in the hopes of utilising native plants in a way that gives back to the island.
His company is now investigating the properties of native flora on the island through a western scientific lens using a supercritical extractor to help underscore anecdotal history like the anti-inflammatory nature of kawakawa and the antiviral properties of kūmarahou.
Toki says he follows his own curiosity. ‘‘I’m fascinated with rongoā, I’m fascinated with electricity, and so motivated by the problems I think that we need to solve – they take various shapes and forms, the problems, but so do the approaches, and I suppose, in some ways, I just can’t help myself.’’