CEO prepared to chance his arm

By SIMON HENDERY marketing writer

The arm-wrestle between two company bosses was supposed to be a quirky way to snuff out some bad publicity over a legal wrangle.

But it turned into what was probably the second-biggest international news story to come out of New Zealand in March - the month we lost the America's Cup.

David Ware, the businessman whose unorthodox approach to dispute resolution captured the imagination of the world's media, was out when the Business Herald called the Wellington office of his telecommunications company TeamTalk.

A request for his cellphone number brought a chuckle from the man on the other end of the line.

"You don't know David, do you? He doesn't have a cellphone. He had a pager once but he dropped it in a glass of beer."

The unreachable chief executive of a company that runs the country's largest mobile radio network called back an hour later, more than happy to talk about his 15 minutes of fame, how it affected business, and the TeamTalk corporate tattoo.

The story goes something like this. TeamTalk's radio network is used by the likes of trucking firms and taxi companies.

When competing network operator MCS Digital RT bought a retail business selling handsets for TeamTalk's network, Ware stripped the retailer of its accreditation.

MCS continued to connect its handsets to TeamTalk's network and complained to the Commerce Commission that TeamTalk's move was anti-competitive, and Wellington's Dominion Post wrote an article about the spat.

In February, the commission said it would take no action, but Ware says that because of the publicity, some of his customers had begun grizzling that he was a bully.

He was contemplating going down the expensive and uncertain route of seeking an injunction to stop MCS when, on a flight back from Sydney, he came up with the idea of settling the dispute with an arm-wrestle.

"What I wanted was a nice, quick, simple way of resolving the issue," he said.

MCS boss Allan Cosford accepted the challenge and won the best-of-three bout 2-1 at a Mt Eden boxing gym.

Ware estimates losing the bout cost his company about $200,000, but in a press release that was picked up around the world, he said: "Sure, losing hurts, but not nearly as much as paying lawyers' bills."

The story was picked up "everywhere, basically," said Ware.

He gave about 20 interviews to radio stations around the world, and fielded inquiries from international newspapers, magazines and television networks.

"I was on the line to CNN in Hong Kong and my PA was on the line to CNN in New York. There was all this activity for three or four days and then 'boom', it's all over and on to the next thing.

"It's been an interesting experience."

When Ware wrote in his press release that "There's no law that says doing business has to be boring," he was probably understating TeamTalk's history of wackiness.

The company, which used to have "RIP Telecom" tombstones in its offices when the telco giant was a mobile radio competitor, did an about-face and held a "hatchet-burying ceremony" at Wellington's Oriental Bay when TeamTalk bought Telecom's Fleetlink division in 2001.

Ware and about 20 per cent of his staff have TeamTalk logo tattoos, a fact he once shared with a Rotary club audience, sparking an earlier spell of media interest.

Being in the international spotlight may have novelty value, but it probably does not equate to more business for a specialist telco company in a small market.

Still, "there will definitely be a lot more craziness but the more we can do outside the media eye, the easier it will be for everybody concerned."