FASHIONLINE WELCOMES NZ BUSINESS

The group comprises approved suppliers in the manufacture, distribution and sales of window furnishings, security products and home improvement products.

Gail and Paul Christie of Bay Blinds in Mount Maunganui South (Taurunga region), around 200 kilometres south of Auckland, told WFA that Fashionline membership looked set to add critical benefit to their growing business going forward.

“Our Fashionline membership is in the company name of Bay Blinds,” said Director Gail Christie. “Paul and I purchased Bay Blinds in April 2017, however, prior to this we owned Santa Fe Shutters & Blinds for 16 years. The majority of the Santa Fe products are imported, with the main product being the prestigious Norman Shutters which we import from China. We do, however, still manufacture small volumes of bespoke Western Red Cedar Shutters in our Tauranga factory and import Aluminium Shutters that are both sold for specialised exterior applications.”

“The Bay Blinds business is quite different and here we locally manufacture a range of Roller, Venetian, and Vertical blinds.”

“The businesses, which are run separately, both sell retail and wholesale. Santa Fe and Bay Blinds retail in their home region of Tauranga with Santa Fe extending its region to include the larger Auckland retail market. We sell wholesale to the rest of the country and have many small and large customers who promote our products as part of the range of window coverings they sell.”

Our target market in retail varies between both businesses. With Santa Fe selling mainly shutters, our target market for the first 14 years in the business was heavily skewed to female 45-60 in the upper income bracket however now we see a lot more shutters going into the homes of young professionals. This shift has meant that we have changed our advertising over time from full page ads in House and Garden to a far greater skew towards online marketing to capture an audience that now spends more time in the digital space than leafing through a magazine.

The retail target market for Bay Blinds has always been a far wider group where we fit a lot of single blinds into pensioners’ kitchens at the same time as we provide house lots of fully automated blinds into high quality homes built by some of New Zealand’s best builders.

When we purchased Santa Fe we had five staff and now between the two businesses we have grown to over 100. These are a combination of factory staff, commission sales consultants, contract installers and administrative staff. Our local administration teams are located in our NZ offices and we also run overseas data entry staff in several countries. The reason we made a shift to offshore staff is that both businesses were very space constrained and we could see that if we did not increase our staff then our customer service was going to be compromised.

“To allow us to have offshore staff we have had to spend a lot of time on developing strong systems in the business. The systems we use along with the Blind Matrix CRM program allow us to ensure we give a high level of customer service at all times to both our retail and wholesale customers. We also run regular training programmes for our wholesale customers to ensure that they are kept up to date with market changes and trends.”

“We were introduced to Fashionline in 2017 by friends in Australia who had been members for some time,” Gail told WFA.

“We met the all the members and suppliers at the 2017 AGM and were then accepted as the first overseas members just prior to the 2018 AGM in June this year. Straight away we could see the value in participating in a group that was focused on sharing knowledge about products, business development, marketing, innovation and strategy. When we bought Santa Fe we had no knowledge at all of the window treatment industry, so now being able to meet up and talk to people who are the second and third generation in their business means there is always someone who has come across the challenge we are trying to solve whether it is to do with products or business development.”

“It is always hard in a growing, dynamic business to ensure that as well as completing all day to day tasks that time is spent on the looking to the future. We take time each year to look at our growth plans along with the strategies and products we will introduce to ensure that the business can stay up to date with market trends. Talking to other members of the Fashionline group about the products that are doing well in their business and also with the supporting suppliers about the new innovations they will be introducing, is now becoming part of our strategic planning activities.”