Kiwi made products page becomes online shopping platform

Three months after 23 year old former Elected Member for Manurewa, Sarah Colcord, founded what has grown to be the country’s most popular Facebook group, New Zealand Made Products, she has partnered with the team at design and innovation company, Indigo, to launch online shopping platform, Chooice.co.nz.   

Indigo’s Pat and Jada MacFie, Monty Betham and Andy Hamilton, also co-founders of COVID-born small business support forum Manaaki-io, along with their team and Ms Colcord (pictured above) have delivered a smart, social shopping platform that they say will help Kiwi small businesses succeed at scale.   

Why Chooice? Just like your cool Auntie from up north, Colcord said Chooice plays the role of knowing what’s up when it comes to Kiwi products. Catching the wave of patriotism and building on a network of more than half a million Facebook members, Chooice will be a platform open to all New Zealand-owned companies.   

“We give you the choice to buy from New Zealanders, the best choice of products, and everything we sell is chooice-as,” said Colcord.   

No Success Fees

The user experience can be described as “Facebook meets Amazon” with a Home Shopping Network. And there will be no success fees for merchants, with the only source of the platform’s income being the commissions from live shopping broadcasts.   
Pat MacFie said it was important to make the platform as accessible as possible to help small business owners continue their success and he said he was drawn to the project after observing a gap in New Zealand’s digital ecosystem.   
“Chooice is about helping take small Kiwi businesses to the next level. We want to help them sell out. And having a standalone platform allows them to keep selling out.” 

 “We want to give small businesses and startups the best shot at scaling in the post COVID economy.”  

A Meeting of Minds and Cultural Values

Formerly one of New Zealand’s youngest elected officials, Sarah Colcord started New Zealand Made Products as a way to support her events management business, which was hit hard by the restrictions of COVID-19.   
When the page hit 7,000 likes within a week she knew it was building a life of its own.   

Keeping up with demand was tough. She gathered a team of volunteers to help moderate and when Indigo’s Pat and Monty who were behind equally brand-new platform Manaaki.io touched base for a simple collaboration, a beautiful mentoring relationship began.   
“I was getting offers daily from people who wanted a piece of the pie,” she said. “But Pat and Monty stood out as being authentic people who weren’t after anything. When they heard I was getting offers, they stood in to review approaches and offer advice like big brothers.   

“Eventually it was a natural progression that if I were to work with anyone – it would be them.   

The founding group also found common ground in their shared cultural value of servant leadership said Colcord.   
“He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. The most important thing is the people. Not just business owners, but their people: their staff, their whakapapa, and their whanau – where they’ve come from and where they’re going.   

“Success is seeing businesses succeed. Our ‘why’ is helping businesses achieve their ‘why’.” 

Chooice Live has now been viewed more than 30,000 times.