February 18th, 2014
Photo credit; Lydia on Flickr
While overall mail volumes continue to decline, parcel volumes are on the rise, growing by 4% per year.
The rise in parcel shipments is due to the fact that more Kiwis are ordering items online, New Zealand Post chief operating officer Ashley Smout said.
But the rise in parcel volume cannot stop the fall of general mail volume, which is falling at a rate of about 8% per year. Smout said the decline was the biggest ever in 2013, compared with between 5% and 6% in the past.
He said the company is meeting this challenge with more advanced sorting procedures to reduce the amount of manual sorting and providing posties with different modes of transport.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: business, delivery, New Zealand Post, online, parcel, shopping
Posted in E-mail & the internet, New Zealand, new zealand business, Online Sales, online shopping, onlines store | No Comments »
February 13th, 2014
Photo credit; Joel Kramer on Flickr
Kiwis no longer have to leave the comfort of their own homes when they want to pawn possessions, thanks for Queenstown resident Samantha Bell.
Bell has opened New Zealand’s first ever online pawn shop.
These online versions of the classic brick and mortar money lenders have already been successful in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
And now Bell’s company, Plej, has successfully brought the practice to the islands, acquiring a physical premises in Queenstown last April after having successfully launched its website prior to that.
Plej offers short-term loans of $100 to $10,000, secured against things like jewellery and watches, sports gear, collectibles, art and antiques, offering three-month loans, which incur monthly interest of 10-20%, depending on the amount borrowed.
That works out to a total of $300 of interest on a $1000 loan, or $60 on the smallest available $100 loan, for the three-month term.
“There were online pawnbrokers in the UK, States, Canada- but nobody was doing it in New Zealand,” Bell says.
After proving their identity, customers are sent courier bags to ship their items to Queenstown, where they are valued and securely stored. At the end of the three months they repay the loan to have their items couriered back to them.
By law, anything that isn’t reclaimed has to be sold either at an auction house or through sites like Trade Me.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: business, New Zealand, online, pawn, Plej, Samantha Bell
Posted in E-mail & the internet, New Zealand, new zealand business, onlines store, Success story, trademe | No Comments »
January 16th, 2014
Photo credit; Beads for Beds on Flickr
Although running her own fashion accessory business, Zabbana, requires long hours from owner Kelly Bozzone, it provides her with the flexibility she needs for her nomadic lifestyle.
Bozzone studied design, art history and learned how to hand-make jewellery prior to working for a year in the jewellery wholesale business in New Zealand. The experiences and knowledge she learned from these environments were invaluable for her when she launched Zabbana in January of 2008.
While she typically works 10 hour days during the week and does catch up work on the weekends, Bozzone says running her own online business suits her because of her husband having to split his time between New Zealand and the USA due to his job. Zabbana allows her to go with him rather than having to spend months apart from each other.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: business, New Zealand, online
Posted in E-mail & the internet, New Zealand, new zealand business, Online Sales, online shopping, onlines store, shopping, Success story | No Comments »
January 14th, 2014
Photo credit; elhombredenegro on Flickr
About one out of every five Australian business IP addresses are subjected to Internet security threats every weekday, but that number falls to one out of every eight in New Zealand, according to new research from Deakin University and Trend Micro.
The report, Australia and New Zealand Web threat landscape, is based on monitoring of live Internet traffic between 29 September and 12 October 2013.
The research analysed 170 million Web requests issued from Australia and 20 million Web requests issued from New Zealand per day. There were 450,000 attempts to connect to malicious websites in Australia, compared with 40,000 attempts in New Zealand.
The research also found that, Australian business IP addresses were more likely to be at risk on weekends with approximately one in eight companies susceptible on Saturday and Sunday compared to only one in 13 New Zealand businesses during the weekend.
The United States is the biggest malicious Web hosting country targeting Australia and New Zealand while the Netherlands, Germany and other European Union countries were found to be targeting both countries, too.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, Deakin University, internet, IP address, New Zealand, online, security, Trend Micro, web
Posted in computer, E-mail & the internet, fraud, hacking, malicious software, New Zealand, new zealand business, online scams, online security, onlines store | No Comments »
January 7th, 2014
Photo credit; Michael Button
New Zealand has been ranked 17th in the first edition of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index.
However, the country ranked No. 1 in the survey’s Business Landscape category, which included areas such as labour market flexibility, and it ranked third highest for regulatory landscape and second highest for political stability. And while New Zealand also ranked highly in the Internal Openess category, which includes tolerance of immigrants, minorities, social mobility and prevalence of female professionals — placing fourth — it ranked poorly in the External Openess category, which covers brain gain and qualified labour inflow.
The index, launched last month by international business school, INSEAD, is based on research in partnership with the Human Capital Leadership Institute of Singapore and US-based recruiting company, Adecco. INSEAD said the index, which measures a nation’s competitiveness based on the quality of talent it can produce, attract and retain, placed Switzerland at the top of the ranking, followed by Singapore and Denmark in second and third place, respectively.
The index model covers 103 countries, representing 86.3 per cent of the world’s population and 96.7 per cent of the globe’s gross domestic product.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Adecco, business, Global Talent Competitiveness Index, INSEAD, New Zealand
Posted in New Zealand, new zealand business, Uncategorized | No Comments »
January 2nd, 2014
Photo credit; Kirby Kerr on Flickr
Swap or Trade It is a newly launched grass roots New Zealand company that has built a website that individuals, businesses and communities can use to swap or trade, rent or hire, buy or sell or give away virtually anything.
It is designed to encourage recycling and encourage people to think about sustainability, director Sharon George says.
“Initially we set up Swap or Trade it because we saw a gap in the online market space that wasn’t being met. There weren’t any good quality websites where you could do more than just buy or sell,” George says. “There were no websites that gave you the option to buy, sell, swap or trade, rent or hire or give away. One size doesn’t always fit all.”
The website doesn’t just allow people to swap objects. People can also swap their skills for stuff they need.
While George says she wants the business to be profitable, it’s not the main point of the business. The focus for her is on helping others to find ways to swap or trade things and to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
“There are many different avenues that we can pursue to build profitability, George says. “We have invested a significant amount of money in our business, because we are passionate about building a more sustainable economy, environment and community. We are currently developing multiple streams of income from different areas other than fee collection from users which will allow more people to use the site for free.”
So far the site has seen things like household furniture being exchanged for gardening work and boats being exchanged for Harley Davidsons. George says she can’t wait to see the site’s first house exchange.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: business, New Zealand, Sharon George, Swap or Trade It
Posted in E-mail & the internet, New Zealand, new zealand business, Online Sales, online shopping, onlines store, social networking, Success story | No Comments »
December 31st, 2013
Photo credit; Guzm??n Lozano on Flickr
Reuben Cairns-Morrison and business partner Gene Hogan are riding high on the success of their surf app Sherpa Surfguide, which is an iPhone application that tells users where the best surf is anywhere in New Zealand. The app is basically a digital surf guide plus a surf forecasting service which are two services that have yet to be combined. Cairns-Morrison says it is a huge advantage to surfers who are on the road, as they can get information updated hourly about the conditions and the surf breaks on their phones.
He also says this summer the pair plan to improve the content of the app by travelling the country and taking detailed notes and photos, as well as promoting the app in surf stores. When they are totally happy with the New Zealand version, they will take the idea elsewhere.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: app, application, business, iphone, New Zealand, online, Sherpa Surfguide, surf
Posted in app, apple, Apple Mac, iphone, New Zealand, new zealand business, smartphone, smartphones, Success story, tablet, tablets | No Comments »
December 26th, 2013
Photo credit; Gildas Maquaire on Flickr
James McGlinn, co-founder and chief executive of Eventfinda and an Entrepreneurs’ Organisation NZ member, has found much success with his online business.
Eventfinda is an online event marketing and ticketing company that around 800,000 New Zealanders use each month to find out what’s on.
The fastest growing area of business for Eventfinda is ticketing. Currently, at any given time, it is ticketing more than 400 different events, more than any other New Zealand ticketing company.
Eventfinda allows event promoters, organisers and venues to list their events for free, have that information distributed through a range of content partners, and control their own ticket sales. The Eventfinda platform has been successfully licensed in Europe and Australia and the company recently launched in the United States and Singapore.
McGlinn started the company when he was 26, saying that prior to Eventfinda’s launch, events in New Zealand had no central listing website, making it more difficult for people to find an event. The entrepreneur may have been young when he started Eventfinda, but he was already a veteran businessman, having started his own web hosting company, Entertainz, when he was 17.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: business, Eventfinda, James McGlinn, New Zealand, online
Posted in consumers, E-mail & the internet, New Zealand, new zealand business, Online Sales, online shopping, onlines store, Success story | No Comments »
December 24th, 2013
Photo credit; Asim Bijarani
It seems Kiwis are embracing mobile banking, if ASB’s claims are anything to go by.
The company says its relatively new Mobile Business app has seen a “remarkable uptake” in its first few weeks.
“Since the ASB Mobile Business app was launched in September, we’ve seen a rapid uptake with users authorising tens of millions of payments on-the-go every week,” says Steve Jurkovich, Executive GM of Corporate, Commercial and Rural, ASB.
“Usage of the ASB Mobile Business app is increasing rapidly week-on-week,” Jurkovich says. “This tells us that businesses owners and managers are embracing the flexibility that the app is giving them to check balances and authorise payments while balancing family and travel demands.”
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: ASB, business, mobile banking, mobile business app, New Zealand, online
Posted in E-mail & the internet, Going Digital, New Zealand, new zealand business, smartphone, smartphones, tablet | No Comments »
