Claire Matthews, founder of environmentally-friendly toy company Honu Play, talks starting her firm in London before moving back to New Zealand and why toys are the first of many products she has in store for her firm.
What does your business do?
Honu is a design brand that works to reduce plastic pollution through thoughtful and sustainable designed objects for the home. Our debut product is a kids' toy, Greta the Great, which is a turtle toy designed for the bath and water play and it is made out of recycled fishing nets. The toy industry is 90 per cent made of plastic still so that is an important focus area for us, but we do want to diversify and design other objects that are useful and functional for the home as well. If you think about other products around your home that are made of plastic right now; we would love to make recycled plastic alternatives.
Honu launched in 2020 during a London summer. We were free from lockdown at the time. I started the business in London but relocated back to New Zealand after running it there for about two years. I always planned to bring it back here with me, but I do have some of my logistics run out of the UK, a fulfilment centre, and I'm planning to be bringing that more back to New Zealand to have it all on the ground here.
What was the motivation for starting it?
I had heard that by 2050 we were going to have more plastic in the ocean than fish, and I had just had my first child, my daughter, and I was thinking 'Oh gosh, that is only 30 years away - I'll only be 60 and she'll still only be 30; what is the world going to look like?'. I pictured myself on the beach with my daughter and possibly my grandchildren and I thought 'I don't want to be feeling guilty that I didn't do something about the plastic crisis'.