Phie Jewels owner Sophie Sullivan with her stall at an expo.
Three category winners from the recent Te Puke Business Excellence Awards were highly commended the last time the awards were held in 2021.
Phie Jewels won the Te Puke EDG Emerging Business Award last month after, as a 16-year-old, business founder Sophie Sullivan was highly commended in 2021.
Having recently moved to the South Island, Sophie returned home for the awards and initially thought she was in the retail category.
“I thought, no, I haven’t got a show of this,” she says.
Relieved when it was confirmed her nomination was in the emerging business category, she says it was “quite a big surprise” to win.
“I was pretty excited and was quite nervous to try and do a speech in front of everyone. I didn’t think I’d win, but thought if I did I’d just do it on the fly.”
With a focus on earrings, Sophie started the business as a 13-year-old when she discovered her ears were sensitive to regular jewellery.
She says being highly commended inspired her, and the latest win has had a similar impact.
“Winning this time has definitely put it in my mind that I need to push this business a bit harder.
“What I’m working on at the moment is redoing the website and getting more into the social media side of it and looking at doing more gift fairs which are quite a big thing for the wholesale side of it, to try and get into more shops.”
Phie Jewels is still just a side business for Sophie, who works in the horticulture industry, but she says she enjoys what she does.
“I’m still always trying to think of new things. And I’m looking at the possibility of going into clothing.”
The Te Puke EDG Excellence in Sustainability Award went to Ricado Remote Data Systems, another business that was highly commended in 2021.
The business uses technology to remotely manage and control different elements of an orchard or business.
General manager Scott Whitwell says he was rapt to get the award, but he recognises the need to keep moving forward.
“Every business right now has to do their best in all areas including innovation and customer service. You can’t sit still, so we are going to continue to improve our service and customer engagement and keep innovating.”
He says the business’s products help its customers to be sustainable.
“We have a mixture of products. For instance, our agri-hort product is really around water conservation monitoring and giving good data around what water’s being used. Then [customers] can make quality decisions on how to reduce that.”
Monitoring systems are also valuable in the area of energy management and conservation in, for example, coolstores.
“Fundamentally our platform has the ability to do that remotely – so you don’t have to drive to the site any more to [do things] manually, it can all be done from a smartphone so that reduces travel, that reduces time and you also get quality data.”
Te Puke EDG Excellence in Innovation Award went to Black & White Beauty at Pukehina Beach.
Owner Kerry Barugh says she was a little bit surprised but delighted to win.
“With my beauty business, because I have sourced products from overseas and have done my own brand and sell other stockists as well – that’s probably how they looked at it as innovative.”
She has also set up a Facebook page for local businesses.
“I really think it’s important for businesses to support each other and to network.”
Although she has always been involved in the beauty and hair industries, Kerry started Black & White, which is attached to a lodge retreat in Pukehina Beach, during the pandemic.
The BUPA Te Puke Food & Beverage Award was won by The Packhouse, owned by Lumberjack Brewing. Ian O’Malley, Brett Vincent and Greg Thomas bought Anann Pineapple Pub in Palmer Place a year ago.
Renaming the pub was one of many changes that have been made in the past 12 months.
Ian says the award is gratifying after what has been a very busy year.
“We’ve gone from two staff members to 11, from being open four evenings a week to being open seven days and also [opening] as a cafe.”
He says the business has been growing organically and that has ensured proper systems are in place to make that growth sustainable.
“One of the biggest things for us is the repeat customers. We have people coming every single night we are open for dinner and people coming in multiple times a day.”
For some months things were tricky, but the employment of a chef that had the right fit for the business was a turning point.
“It was extremely hard staffing-wise [at first] because we did literally have to do everything while we were waiting [for the right person].
“One of the big things is the effort we put in to make sure, for people who come in every week, there’s always different food items, there’s different weekly specials.
“In a small town that doesn’t have a huge lot of people and not a huge catchment of people you can rely on to just walk in, you do have to work really hard to make it so people do want to come in multiple times a week and it’s always fresh for them.”
Future plans are to consolidate and grow the business.
“We’ve got plans to continue growing and we’ve got a lot of modifications to make to our building so we can get more people in.”
The Western BOP District Council Retail Award was won by Te Puke Super Liquor.
“We are always very happy to get an award – there’s a lot of very good retail businesses in Te Puke and we were up against some high-calibre contestants so I’m pretty happy,” says co-owner Ash Peat.
He says the kiwifruit industry is a major factor in the vitality of the town.
“That’s a huge driver for the town. Even if the payout’s not great or the crops are down, all the work on the orchards still has to get done so we’ve got an amazing industry here that drives the town and a lot of the businesses involved in the town.”
The Te Puke EDG Ultimate Customer Experience Award was won by Te Puke Library.
Western Bay of Plenty District Council’s customer and library services manager Valeta Duncan says the team at the library was ecstatic over the win.
“The library and service centre team works extremely hard and is committed to providing an empathetic and responsive service to their community of Te Puke.
“It is a place where our customers experience the joy that our library has to offer but also assist customers with often difficult council inquiries and they strive to ensure that these are resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“We invite everyone to come down and visit the team and experience the service first hand.”
Other winners were:
Trevelyan’s Pack & Cool Service Award: Poutiri Wellness Centre.
Zespri Ag/Hort Award: Pivot Horticulture (previously highly commended)
Te Puke EDG Leader of the Year Award: Kirsty Maxwell-Crawford (CEO Poutiri Wellness).
Bennetts Proactive Supreme Award: Poutiri Wellness Centre.