Taupō’s The Cozy Corner isn’t just a café, it’s a community hub where inclusivity, wellness, and sustainability meet. With a menu that caters to every dietary need, a great team culture, and a commitment to values-driven business, owner Camilla Baker has built an eco-friendly café that sets the standard for hospitality with heart.
New Zealand small businesses are facing one of the biggest shifts in customer discovery since the rise of Google Search, as AI-powered tools change how consumers find, compare and choose who to hire.
More than 80 percent of people don’t independently verify AI-generated information. As AI becomes the first place customers go for answers, that trust is creating a new challenge for New Zealand businesses.
We’re told the economy and the environment are locked in a trade-off. Autex’s Jonathan Mountfort says that’s a false choice, and shows how circular thinking is already building a healthier version of both.
New Zealand research into scientist-entrepreneurs has identified an “IP paradox”: Intellectual property is seen as essential to start-up success, yet often experienced as a costly, complex barrier. Here’s what the findings mean for founders, investors and the wider SME community.
AI is having its “peak hype” moment, but beneath the noise there is a very practical question most New Zealand business owners are asking: Will this actually help my business run better, or is it just another shiny tech distraction?
Most of the AI conversation right now is about what the technology will eventually do for everyone. Not much of it covers what you should actually start doing, this week, to make sure your business can use any of it. Let’s change that.
Keynote speaker, educator, author, recording artist and Solo Meo Award winner Julia Grace, has turned her mental health journey into inspiring talks, workshops, and performances across New Zealand and beyond. She’s also made a success of being an entrepreneur in the process.
Setting a big, bold goal feels like strategy. It isn’t. Ryan Sproull explains why picturing success can actually work against you, and what to do instead.
After a punishing economic cycle Kiwi businesses are emerging into something of a stabilisation period. Cautiously optimistic, past the worst, but with operating costs still biting and reinvestment held back. Why the next six months will define the recovery, and what business owners need to be doing in that period.
New data from Employment Hero shows New Zealand’s small and medium business sector continuing to add headcount in May, even as wage growth stalled completely on an annual basis, highlighting a labour market where businesses are growing cautiously rather than competing hard for talent on pay.
Turning a dreaded parenting challenge into a science-powered solution, ISpy Nits is making head lice detection accurate, stigma-free, and even fun for kids, and in the process earning Kate Ricketts a well-deserved David Award.
After burnout and a corporate career, Nikki Taylor started her own business at 44, and discovered that midlife isn’t a crisis, but a chance for clarity, on what kind of work, and life, actually fits.
New Zealand’s productivity gap with countries like Finland isn’t about effort, it’s about clarity. Elliot Royce argues that as businesses grow, complexity quietly crowds out a shared understanding of what actually creates value, turning productivity into a symptom rather than the real problem.
A pilot programme’s runaway demand has exposed just how many promising New Zealand startups are being turned away by traditional bank lending.
New Zealand’s sustainable innovators remain confident about growth, but a new report shows many are struggling to access the capital and conditions needed to actually scale.
New Zealand’s small business productivity has flatlined, with the country continuing to trail Australia and the UK, even as Deloitte’s latest CFO survey shows finance leaders remain confident about growing their businesses despite economic uncertainty.
Solar retailer Lodestone Energy is opening up its “virtual rooftop” solar product to residential and small business customers for the first time, choosing Hawke’s Bay as the launch region for its new EASY Plan.
New Zealand tourism businesses are committed to becoming more sustainable, but new research shows the journey from good intentions to genuine change is anything but straightforward.
Spacebar Design won Most Innovative Business at The David Awards 2025, also taking out the Supreme Award, recognition that cements its role as a trailblazer in sustainable interior design.
New Zealand’s longest-running sustainability awards programme is calling for entries, with expanded categories and a direct pathway to a global million-pound prize.
Kiwibank has become the first New Zealand bank to roll out open banking across all its digital channels for both individual and business customers, delivering most of the data‑sharing capability required by regulators six months ahead of its statutory deadline.
Christchurch’s Tait Communications has been named PwC Hi-Tech Company of the Year at the 2026 NZ Hi-Tech Awards, capping a record-breaking night for New Zealand’s third-largest export sector.
Full-scale loyalty programmes are expensive, complex and slow to roll out, but a gift card programme can deliver many of the same benefits in a fraction of the time, and customers pay you upfront for the privilege.
Inside MOXX Brands, the Kiwi FMCG company growing at 512 percent and rewriting the export playbook in the process.
Hawke’s Bay’s Rockit has landed one of China’s most bankable celebrities as its brand ambassador.
Demand for Tapuwae Roa’s Tupu Accelerator keeps climbing, with a new cohort of ten high-growth Māori-founded ventures welcomed for the programme’s third consecutive year.
A new Christchurch start-up wants to turn the security cameras already watching your warehouse into a real-time safety system that spots risk before it becomes an incident.
As New Zealand businesses face mounting productivity pressure, new research from 2degrees shows AI is already delivering measurable gains for SMEs. From streamlining operations to unlocking new growth opportunities, the challenge now is turning early experimentation into lasting business impact.
Acron Plastics, a New Zealand thermoforming manufacturer, had been running as a fully paper-based business before adopting MRPeasy. We sat down with Business & Sales Manager Mark Wong to see how the company uses the system to structure orders, manage purchasing and inventory, and reduce the risk of missed jobs.
Looking to boost the results performance of your salespeople? Logan Wedgwood identifies self-management and technology adoption as the key to success. Why is it that some salespeople seemingly have all the natural capability they could ask for, but lack the performance to bring results? Often, the answer is much simpler than assumed. It comes down to personal daily structure, sometimes referred to as ‘self-management’. It’s about how an individual sets themselves up for success every single day. And there’s no excuse for it, really. There are free or cost-effective tools all over the Internet to help with this. As an example, some of the areas one could explore include: A morning routine that sets one up well for the day.
Jo Douglas explains what one significant change to the Privacy Act means to the cross-border exchange of information on employees. As an employer, you will likely be involved in collecting personal information about those who work for you. This process of information gathering commonly starts at the interview stage and will carry on throughout the employment relationship. Information you hold about staff must be protected, and safeguards put in place to make sure that you manage the use and disclosure of that information only as necessary for a legitimate and lawful business purpose. With the common use of cloud-based services for processing information and centralised administrative processes for larger companies, it is possible that information may be transferred beyond
Mat Wylie explains how instilling a culture of customer retention and great experiences both empowers your team and boosts profits. There are few things more powerful to your business than delivering an exceptional experience and keeping your customers coming back. In fact, data from Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company shows that increasing customer retention rates by just five percent can increase profits by up to 95 percent. That’s a solid foundation to get through leaner times, get an edge over competitors, and invest more back into your business. Having received and analysed more than six million pieces of feedback for our clients at Customer Radar, we know that it’s the customer experience that makes or breaks a business’s ability
A new support service has been launched to help Kiwi business owners get the tools and support they need to thrive. Small Business NZ (SBNZ) is an online platform launched recently that aims to provide community, connection and resources for small and micro businesses across the country. Because, let’s face it, running a business is hard. Often small business owners feel isolated, left trying to figure it all out alone. Despite the difficulties, New Zealand is a proud nation of small and micro business owners. Defined as a business with fewer than 20 employees, there are approximately 530,000 small businesses in Aotearoa, according to Statistics New Zealand and MBIE. This means small businesses make up 97 percent of all companies
If you were to write down the risks your small business currently faces, how many do you have protection for? And are you sure that protection will cover you if the worst were to happen? From reducing costs to working from home and moving operations online, New Zealand businesses have changed a lot since the start of the pandemic. And with more than three quarters of small business owners saying in a Vero industry survey that they plan to keep at least some of the changes, this appears to be the new normal. But despite the high level of changes to business, this isn’t reflected in updated business insurance. Some 20% have decreased their cover while 19% reduced the number
Successfully running a business is an impressive feat and challenges can be frequent, and testing. Yet through obstacles like these, business owners gain valuable learnings and insights into consumer behaviour, their market, and business in general. One area where small businesses often run into hurdles is during debt recovery. Healthy cash flow is instrumental to running a successful small business, with the power to turn a struggling operation into a happy one. In this article, we explore some of the biggest obstacles that New Zealand businesses run into when chasing their unpaid accounts. 1. Clear systems and expectations. Small businesses are known for moving quickly to try and hit the ground running. Often this comes at the expense of critical
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Everyone talks about the importance of business strategy, but what does it actually mean in practice? Strategy trainer Ryan Sproull cuts through the jargon to give SME owners a clear, practical framework for thinking strategically about their business.
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Practical AI insights, Kiwi tech innovators, and the tools helping Kiwi SMEs compete on a global stage. It’s all packed into this special tech issue of NZBusiness.
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