Emerging Leader in International Business

Tony Egan started his career selling meat at family business Greenlea Premier Meats. By the time he was 35, he was chief executive of AFFCO.

Late in 2011 he returned to run the family business as managing director. He says the prodigal has returned older and a little wiser to the industry he loves the most.

Prior to that he was chief executive of AsureQuality, a state owned enterprise which assists New Zealand companies throughout the primary industries to achieve market access or competitive advantage and protects their reputations and brands by ensuring their products are safe and of good quality. AsureQuality has customers in over 40 countries and staff and facilities in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.

Tony’s four-year tenure as chief executive  included the development of his popular weekly memo to all staff. Employees responded to being offered a wider understanding of what was happening for the company and the memo presented a forum for celebrating success, recognising long service, and highlighting roles within the company.

He also undertook an annual roadshow to visit as many of the organisation’s 2,000 staff as possible.

Tony says leadership is about adapting but staying true to core values.  He supports his staff and will stand up for them and protect them when necessary. He also ensures they are paid fairly, referencing external salary surveys as a measure, and senior executives at AsureQuality had a component of “at risk pay”.

He was instrumental in establishing company values which contributed to the success of the business, namely customer responsiveness, operational excellence, leadership, staff wellbeing, integrity and the concept of ‘one team’.

Tony was recently selected to participate in the inaugural Global Executive Leadership Programme initiated by NZTE. The aim of this programme is to create true global thinkers, leaders and organisations capable of sustained international growth by developing the knowledge, mindset, capability and confidence of senior executives of global New Zealand businesses.

Sarah Gibbs, co-founder and chief executive of New Zealand natural skincare brand Trilogy, holds an annual Christmas party for suppliers, refuses to employ anyone who isn’t fun, and encourages clever thinking and creativity with the phrase “don’t just do something, sit there”.

Sarah’ unique business approach and experience in business and exporting is canvassed in more than 20 public speaking engagements a year, where she details the rise of the company she started with her sister Catherine de Groot in 2002.

Sarah worked in international finance in Hong Kong, South Africa and London in the early 1990s before returning to New Zealand in 1999 to establish her own company manufacturing an entire skincare range around Rosehip oil.

In late 2002 Trilogy launched with just five products and two staff into New Zealand and Australia. Today Trilogy has over 40 products, offices in Wellington, Melbourne and London, 27 staff, and 4,000 stockists across 20 markets including Australia, Japan, Korea, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Trilogy was bought by Ecoya in October 2010 and Sarah remained as chief executive.

Sarah is renowned for her strategic vision, financial discipline, foresight, planning and single mindedness.

One of her first international targets for Trilogy was Australian retail giant Myer. After a determined 18-month campaign, the brand was listed in 55 Myer department stores across Australia. The story was the same in the United Kingdom, where Trilogy now partners with the world’s largest pharmacy retailer Boots, and prestigious department stores such as John Lewis.

Sarah is on the executive of Export New Zealand’s national board and is a sought-after business mentor, currently mentoring five New Zealand businesses looking to expand into the international arena.

Experienced exporter Keith Oliver has come up with four approaches to international market expansion: the “Feral”, a guy making something in a shed and selling it overseas; the “Imperialist”, an exporter who tells international buyers “use it like this or else!”; the “Colonial”, a company which manages to appear and act local by appointing channel partners; and the “Federal”, a company which puts staff in market and encourages inter-region collaboration to form truly deep partnerships.

Ketih is Executive Chairman of Compac Sorting Equipment, which develops manufactures,  exports and sells complete solutions for the grading and sorting of fruit and vegetables. He is chairman of Actronic Technologies and Loadrite Onboard Systems which develop, manufacture, export and sell industrial weighting and control systems.

He is Chairman of Medicine Mondiale Technologies, a not for profit company developing and commercialising innovative affordable products and technologies that improve access to quality healthcare on a global scale. And he is director of Alto Capital, which offers advisory services in areas such as mergers, acquisitions, succession planning and strategy development.

Keith is known as a motivator.  He prepares what he calls “whimsical reports” which disseminate findings from his overseas trips for all staff. Keith says a chairman’s job is to be “keeper of the core values”.

Keith says he takes an anthropic approach to leadership and organisational change, believing that organisations behave and act like living beings.

Associates say Keith is an outstanding example of a leader who relies on close advisors and thinks strategically before implementation.

His particular strengths lie in strategy, organisation development, channel development and linking commercialisation with IP management and financial analysis.

Keith believes he offers an ability to see the big picture and to articulate this vision to others.

You don’t want to go on a business trip with Bryn Thompson.

The owner of Metalcraft Engineering works 70 hour weeks and staff recite stories of nightmare work trips with the boss where he rarely slept and always made time for additional customer contact.

Achieving is very important to the man who left school at 15, bought a one-man engineering workshop in 1991 and built it into an internationally-recognised company with branches in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Seattle and Vancouver.

‘The Glass Racking Company’, the global brand for Metalcraft, is known internationally as a leading innovator in glass factory handling and transportation.

Bryn is all about global success. All office staff have a printed copy of a vision statement about a “humungous dream” and an “outrageous vision”.

If the business needs to upskill in an area, Bryn will often be the one to put in the hours needed. For instance, he sought training in web design, built two world-leading websites, and completed all the necessary behind the scenes web optimisation. Each website is estimated to have consumed about 500 man hours.

In addition to chief executive duties, Bryn leads all international sales activity. In the difficult six months following the September earthquake, Bryn flew 144,000km internationally to assure customers Metalcraft remained a viable business partner.

Many recent innovations have stemmed from Bryn’s customer meetings in offshore markets. Innovative solutions are penned on the flights home, and the formal innovation and design process is completed alongside the wider team back in New Zealand.

Bryn says he is bloody minded, demanding and extremely customer focused - he just wants to get things done.

When Brian Russell heard about the trapped Chilean miners, he knew his revolutionary bioharness could help.

In August 2010, Zephyr founder Brian Russell learned of “Los 33”, the Chilean miners trapped 700 metres underground following a cave-in at the San Jose mine.

This wasn’t just a horrific news bulletin to Brian – he knew he could help.

Brian worked hard to cut through bureaucracy to supply the trapped miners with bioharnesses which transmitted vital health information. This could be used to prepare vital treatment solutions for the trapped miners.

The delivery to northern Chile cost Brian substantial time and money but he says it was the right thing to do. His staff say he was passionate and determined about making a humanitarian contribution when such an act was needed most.

Brian, a fit and trim long distance runner, beams about his own use of the bioharness technology. He calls the technology – a health monitoring device –his “life-line”.

Brian founded Zephyr Technology in April 2003 and has served as chief executive from the outset. While product technology is still driven from New Zeland, the company is now based in Annapolis in the United States, principally to keep close to leading customers, such as NASA. Supply chain partners include Motorola and other international brands.

Brian sees his role as “steering the ship”. He has an obvious passion for helping New Zealand and its companies to succeed on the international stage. He thinks Zephyr staff would describe him as passionate, hard working and very customer centric.

The company currently has about 32 staff and Brian says he hopes they feel Zephyr is a company which cares about and values them. He is acutely aware of the need to manage people’s work and stress levels so they are healthy, happy and creative.