Category Archives: Pro Features

Profiling successful Hawke’s Bay Businesses and business leaders

Top Award for Havelock North’s Mia Dolce

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Skin centre Mia Dolce, has been awarded the top honour of Distinction by Dermalogica New Zealand, excelling against a list of criteria that recognises education, innovation, product and service, marketing and commitment.

Located in the heart of Havelock North Village, Mia Dolce offers a range of beauty therapy services, including specialised Dermalogica skin treatments, body massage, spa packages, hands and feet, hair removal, tanning and collagen induction therapy.

Mia Dolce owner and professional skin therapist Claire Jarman says: “It’s such an honor to receive this award, the highest level of recognition by Dermalogica! For the previous three years we have received merit, the next level down, so we’re thrilled to be awarded distinction and sit amongst the top six skin centres in New Zealand.

“The award is testament to my incredible team who always go above and beyond. We have made a concerted effort to advance our training in the past year, giving us the tools to help achieve great results for our clients. And of course, none of this would be possible without our amazing clients.

“Seven years ago, I opened the doors with two staff; we now employ six and have a large clientele. We love supporting the community and being recognised as a top New Zealand skin centre.”

Mia Dolce also won the favourite hair and beauty category at the Havelock North Business Awards last year. This year’s awards will be held at Black Barn in September with online voting via www.lovehavelocknorthnz. co.nz

For the past five years, Claire and her team have also taught basic skincare to Year 12 students at Woodford House. As part of this programme, Mia Dolce donates a Dermalogica skincare pack and an eyelash tint or brow shape to all the students involved.

“Claire and her team continue to impress us with their dedication to their clients and community. They have worked incredibly hard to upskill, innovate and go above and beyond, which is reflected in this award. We look forward to continuing to work with Mia Dolce to help them access success,” says Natasha Bourke, managing director of Dermalogica New Zealand.

 

Fashion Designer draws huge facebook following

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The marketing power of Facebook has surprised a Hawke’s Bay home-based clothing producer who has acquired 29,437 page followers, and still counting, since first posting an offer of children’s clothing two years ago.

Donna Paterson-Mills and her husband Bryce have since extended Donna’s design of clothing into womenswear and have launched a website, www.oliandgus.co.nz,which has streamlined order taking, payments and despatch – and made their home life less hectic.

“It’s all grown so quickly. Our plan is for the website to handle the retail side of our business so we can get our own lives back again,” says Donna.

To give some perspective of the popularity of the Oli & Gus Facebook page, its number of followers exceeds by five times the Facebook following of a successful womenswear retailer with 41 stores throughout New Zealand.

The website will extend the offering of “meant to be worn” clothes for women under their Hot Mamma label, which offers short runs of each garment style – some selling out completely within hours of a post on Facebook.

“Our Hocus Pocus sweater is a recent example. It sold out in eight hours,” says Donna, who designs all the clothes and chooses the fabric for each garment.

Uppermost in her mind is the lifestyle of busy women, like herself, who want good quality clothes that are comfortable to wear, will still look good after repeated washes and offer an individual flair.

“I’m sure our customers like the idea that there’s not much chance of someone else wearing exactly the same dress at the same place.”

She says there is no deference to fashion magazines or catwalk trends, as evident in the Facebook photos of Donna ‘modelling’ her latest garments without make-up or any pretence at being a fashion model.

They had tried modelling with a professional photographer “but I didn’t look like me,” says Donna.

son Angus, now 6, to take the photos with her cell-phone, usually outside for natural light, and then Donna selects an image for uploading to Facebook with no thought of any photo edit.

On the supply side, the opposite happens because there is nothing casual about how the garments are produced.

An offshore garment supplier has learned to follow Donna’s designs and fabric choices and their ongoing communications have led to a mutual respect, as seen in a recent invitation to join the supply company at a major fabric market event.

Donna says her interest in clothing design began as a young girl playing with cotton reels, pattern boxes and a button box at the foot of her grandmother’s antique sewing table.

Rose was a renowned dressmaker in the Hawke’s Bay – her last project, at the age of 80, being Donna’s wedding dress with Arabic embroidery supplied by Donna – and Donna gradually learned from her grandmother the basic skills and art of making clothes.

“I had the most amazing wardrobe as a child, all beautifully handmade. I fell in love with a terry towelling bikini and remember the smocked frocks and dresses Rose made for me. Eventually I started making my own pieces from fabric pulled out of a remnants bag.”

A Massey University bachelor degree in resource and environmental planning enabled Donna to travel to Asia and the Middle East as a language and art teacher, a venture that ultimately led her back into clothing design.

“In Al Ain (the ‘garden city’ 150 kilometres south of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates) I spent hours in the fabric markets and met with the artisans who created the most beautiful garments.

“I started designing my own clothes again to wear while teaching at a private school in Al Ain. My designs had to keep within the Donna ‘models’ her garment designs PRO around the house for young son Angus Feature or husband Bryce to take the photos that are uploaded to Facebook.

cultural boundaries of the Middle East but I added my own ideas on colour.”

In Australia, which became her home for 18 years, Donna worked at management level in the fashion industry while husband Bryce continued his management role in industrial construction.

Three years ago (2014), the couple returned to the Hawke’s Bay and created their Oli & Gus label on Facebook as a work-at-home project for Donna.

She attributes the popularity of Oli & Gus to garment quality, price and an individual look in the designs shaped by her own attitude and lifestyle that’s “a little quirky, a bit bohemian … definitely not mainstream”.

The retail price of each garment is kept close to a target of $100.

“This is not designer clothing and evening wear, unless you want it to be, and it’s priced at a level where someone can see something they like and order it online without too much concern.”

www.oliandgus.co.nz

Unlikely partnership has a unique rhythm

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What started out as a hip-hop collaboration between American Zach Stark and local boy Ratima Hauraki has become so much more, with potential business opportunities that won’t take a rocket to show people where Wairoa is on a map.

The two met when Ratima, whose life had led him in many directions, found his way home to Wairoa. The one constant for him was his music so when he returned, his whanau told him about a recording studio that had opened up at the town’s Gaiety Theatre. “I said, ‘they would have nowhere to put it in the Gaiety Theatre, there are no rooms for it’. But they were adamant there was one in town,” he says.

So, Ratima tracked down Zach and what he found was not so much a ’studio’ as a pakeha with a laptop and a microphone in a room.

“We bumped heads and a week later we had laid down a song. We have been going for about a year now,” Ratima says.

Despite having quite a different background to Ratima, Zach’s life has also led him in many directions. The freelance sound engineer has lived and worked all over the world, but it was an old cinema – the Gaiety Theatre – that brought him to Wairoa.

Zach designed a 9.3 surround sound system for the theatre, the only one of its kind in New Zealand, and seeing that the establishment needed a manager and as his partner loved the area, they decided to stick around.

And the collaboration that launched 5,000 likes and promising business ventures the music video Know Me Now by Rugged and Wylde, also known as Ratima and Zach, if nothing else, it showed both of them just how much can be accomplished with relatively little.

Once set up in his ’studio’, Zach says that with a little self-learning from a few videos and what plug-ins and add-ons are now available online, “you can sound pretty top- notch. The big studios get you the last 10 percent but we get 90 percent of the way without much difficulty, if you have the time and patience to learn and really do the hard work.”

It was then he realised that this could be bigger than one or two songs from Rugged and Wylde.

“Our bigger goal is to work as a region first to get people here on board,” he said. He used the example of Hollywood, how people don’t go there for Sony or Universal of MGM. “You go there because it is Hollywood and Los Angeles and movies. The whole region is promoted so it doesn’t rise and fall on one group.”

This is their view for the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti region, and not just for hip-hop but for all genres of music.

“I would rather see the industry get bigger collaboratively, otherwise everybody walls off and nobody gets anywhere; there are so many talented people here and that shouldn’t happen,” Zach says.

And so, with a little help from Zach’s family, the young entrepreneur went and bought the former Clyde Hotel, located along the town’s main road.

He hopes to lure the big stars down to Wairoa with more than just his laptop, so they can record without the distractions big city life can bring. The family are busy restoring the old building. Having already fitted out an apartment, they are now working on recording studios, not only to draw the big names in but so they can contribute to their region-wide vision.

“Ratima is going to try and start recording people if I am busy at the theatre,” says Zach.

“We are trying to find funds now that will pay Ratima a wage and then we will give a heavily reduced rate for people who want to get started. We are happy to record people and teach them at the same time so they can take the skills with them.”

Ratima and Zach’s vision is one that is long term. Through a planned multimedia hub, the duo plan to work on more than just music. This has thrown up other opportunities that – “depending on what the market dictates” – comprise a five-year plan.

One proposed opportunity that sounds promising is working with the world’s movie industry. Zach explains that a lot of movies run out of funds during their post-production phase and he sees this as a prime opportunity where students can step into small suites in Wairoa and with their editing skills cost-effectively fix this problem.

It is something he did when he worked in Hong Kong and it worked quite well.

“The movie gets finished and the students walk away with a real film credit and potentially get a piece of the pie if it ever goes to market, a small royalty perhaps.”

He says what makes his and Ratima’s vision appealing is that there are very little overheads, whether it is in recording a song or editing a movie.

“These are industries where we don’t have to pollute rivers, we don’t have to destroy mountain sides and we don’t need a lot of space,” he says.

“There are such talented people here who just don’t have the connections, or maybe even the confidence, which is what we want to try and help with.”

To watch Rugged and Wylde’s music videos 111 and Low Life, go to YouTube and type in Rugged and Wylde.