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.
Lauren Parsons shares her nine signs for recognising when things aren’t going well for your employees’ mental state. As a leader it’s vital you stay aware of how your staff are doing and know the signs to look for that could indicate mental distress. In 2021, researchers at AUT found that burnout had tripled – from one in nine Kiwis in early 2020, to just one in three. Depression is also on the rise, with one in four New Zealanders now experiencing a mental health challenge. So, it’s clear that you’ll highly likely have staff within your team who are struggling at times. Putting your head in the sand and ignoring this only exacerbates the challenge. Withdrawal, sadness, anger and
YEN is a young Christchurch gin distiller utilising NFTs to market its product internationally. It’s a disruptive strategy and it’s already succeeding beyond initial expectations. By editor Glenn Baker. In 2020 3D-artist and creative director Blue Hamel, recently returned from New York, along with gin bar co-owner and mixologist Luke Dawkins hatched the idea of producing not just a new gin brand, but also a uniquely millennial/Gen Z-oriented consumer experience based around the emerging NFT digital asset class. Despite many people still playing catch-up on the potential of cryptocurrency, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have already made a mark on the world. Stored (or ‘minted’) in a crypto digital wallet, these tokens exist permanently, each with its own unique digital serial number.
InternetNZ’s interim CEO Andrew Cushen sheds some light on business Internet usage, domain name trends and emerging Internet-enabled technologies. NZB: From your recent discussions with the business community, what are the main concerns they have around Internet usage in 2022? ANDREW: Lockdown and Covid-19 have changed a lot of expectations. Two particular trends show through in the conversation. Firstly, that it is leading to a new wave of digitisation in business. We’ve seen an increase in domain name registrations as more organisations look to establish or revitalise their online presence. As a result of that, there are now more than 740,000 .nz domain names registered. This growth during lockdown is similar to many other countries, as businesses looked to retain
Sébastien Michel and business partner Carole Zink are busy ramping up their tourism business. They’re also finding things are now very different to pre-Covid times. Imagine you own an inbound travel business turning over $4.5 million in sales per annum, when suddenly New Zealand’s borders are slammed shut overnight on you, indefinitely. Such was the nightmare faced by Auckland-based Sébastien Michel and business partner Carole Zink on March 19, 2020. Covid had terminated Frogs-in-NZ, the business they had grown out of a travel blog Sébastien created in 2001. To appreciate the gravity of the situation they found themselves in, you first need to examine why the now renamed Frogs was travelling so successfully before the Covid catastrophe. The journey to
With care and creativity Cathy Pope has carved out a successful business career. Now the talented jewellery designer is looking to grow her brand even further. Cathy Pope admits she accidentally fell into jewellery design. Advertising and media had been her first fields of expertise, both in London and New Zealand, followed by costume design in film and television. But her creative genes leaned towards jewellery design after being gifted some gemstones from a sewing client. “That was almost ten years ago,” she remembers. “I started making and wearing my inaugural chunky choker necklace designs and enough people seemed to like my strong, simple aesthetic styles. Orders from friends came thick and fast.” And just like that, Cathy Pope, the
Upcoming event
Thursday 30 July 2026 | 7:00am – 9:00am
📍 Covert Theatre, 51 Mackelvie Street, Grey Lynn, Auckland
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.
Latest issue
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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