Gallagher Animal Management has taken a 10 per cent stake in Wellington-based Goodnature following a capital raise to help the company find more ways to kill pests.
Goodnature plans to use Gallagher’s investment for software development and marketing its ‘smart trap’ products overseas, CEO Dave Shoemack said.
“I want us to create a brand. It doesn’t really matter if people buy our products, but I want us to create a brand that becomes a movement and a community that makes a difference.”
Shoemack and co-founder Craig Bond say their approach so far has been “quite bootstrapped in that classic Kiwi company way”, and Gallagher’s backing will help them “bid more aggressively” for their hardware and software products.
As Victoria University students and part-time Department of Conservation workers, Robbie van Dam and Bond accepted the challenge to invent a trap that went off more than once, without human intervention. They made a plan to come up with 50 ways to do it, and got to “about 25″, according to Bond.
Shoemack said that after their products took off at home and overseas, they’re now “really becoming a tech company”.
“The A24 is still the core of our product offering and is an amazing product that we’ve managed to stretch across geographies and channels. But we’ve got some other ideas in the pipeline, and this funding will allow us to bring those to market faster and better.”
Shoemack said they plan to extend their work across the globe, especially in software.
“We want to expand to other markets around the world, and this money will help us to do that, with the US being a particular opportunity.”
The pair said their work with Gallagher has only been a recent development, and this boost in funding is a “vote of confidence”. After working with Gallagher in the EU, Goodnature approached the animal management tech company for a larger deal earlier this year.
“We decided it was the right time to get some additional funding to really grow the business. […] Gallagher was the obvious first choice to talk to.”
Goodnature pairs “smart technology” with electronic pest traps to lure and rapidly kill predators, while letting users track each kill on their phone. Their customers are spread “from the top of the North Island to the bottom of South Island and everywhere in between”, with 85 per cent of their products going overseas.
Shoemack said what keeps them going is the chance to “create a company that Kiwis are truly proud of, like Allbirds, where people look at it and think, ‘Wow, they really shook up the shoe industry’.”
“The pest control industry is so broken. It’s so traditional. It’s so archaic,” he said, referring to antiquated set trap and poison systems that dominate the global market.
Legislation around pest control and poisons drives their sales at home and overseas. Shoemack said their biggest markets are Europe, the UK, and the US, with Scandinavia heralding a new opportunity for the company.
“Anti-toxin legislation really leads the way there. […] They’re about to extend that regulation across the whole EU next year, so it’ll be much harder to buy poisons, which will help us hugely.”
Their smart technology Chirp, on the other hand, has only been active across Australia and Aotearoa. After launching the app globally last week, the team are already hearing from their partners in the US that it’s “going crazy”.
“It’s what the market’s been waiting for [...] so that for sure is the future of business,” Shoemack said. Their technology means products get “smarter” over time as their user base grows, “the same way every Tesla is getting smarter”.
Goodnature CEO Dave Shoemack and Gallagher's head of animal management, Lisbeth Jacobs.
The team’s quest has had its challenges. They featured on an episode of Fair Go this year after a disgruntled customer said the products didn’t live up to the hype of consistent contactless trapping.
Shoemack said the exposure ended up being a “really positive thing”, leading to their biggest day of online sales for the year.
“It showed the lengths we go to to support these groups.”
While he acknowledged they could have done better, Shoemack maintains they have learned from the experience. He said the “scariest” part was having their brand representation outside of their control.
Overall, Bond said the crew are pleased to be working alongside Gallagher to achieve their goal “to make a great Kiwi company and have a positive impact on the world”.
Shoemack said, “The money’s great, but it’s so much more for us. We wanted a partner who could help us reach the next level and we think we’ve found that, which we feel really thankful for.”
