The sweet taste of success

Sharlene George (left), Paul Prince and Melanie Bridge founded The Sweet Shop with an eye to attracting international clients. Picture / Martin Sykes

The Sweet Shop is on a roll.

Being named creative exporter of the year at the New Zealand Trade and Export Awards in Christchurch last night crowns a successful year for the boutique production house, which was ranked among the world's top 20 production houses in January by US industry magazine Broads. Last week it opened its first international branch in East London.

Success is sweet for its three founders - Paul Prince, Sharlene George and Melanie Bridge - who teamed up four years ago to start the company now earning millions making television commercials for international advertising agencies.

They specialise in making commercials for premium brands, with high production values that, in their words, blend old world cinematography traditions with new world creative tastes.

On its showreel are BMW, Sony, Volvo, Volkswagen, Guinness, Nokia, Cadbury, Heineken, Nike, Speedo and MTV Europe.

Each month the company looks at about 40 scripts from advertising agencies around the world. For those they are successful in pitching for they pull together a film crew, oversee the shoot, and execute post production from their Eden Tce studios.

Backgrounds of the 22 staff, which includes six directors, cover copywriting, media editing, website producing, photography, film, typography and anthropology. The numbers can swell to 50 when they bring in freelancers for big projects.

Managing director Prince has a background in post production and left a job in marketing for New Zealand film company Silverscreen Productions to start The Sweet Shop.

He teamed up with executive producer George and creative director Bridge, who also worked at Silverscreen and shared his desire to branch out on their own and compete internationally.

Each put in their own money to get the ball rolling, naming the company after the studio's former life as a 1930s confectionary factory - and because they wanted to be a boutique production company "producing goodies".

They have been export-focused from the outset.

"We've always adopted a global outlook and position. We wanted to be viewed as decidedly 'international' and not a small emerging production company from New Zealand," Prince said.

The company quickly became profitable. It hasn't had to resort to loans or overdrafts and is enjoying year-on-year compound growth in turnover of 40 per cent.

Australian advertising agencies are their biggest customers, and 40 per cent of their work is aired across the Tasman, followed by the UK, the US and Asia. About 8 per cent of its work is aired here.

The UK branch will be a marketing arm to represent them in the rapidly growing European market.

Lots of effort goes into developing its offshore markets.

Prince makes eight international sales trips a year and said it had been hard work getting noticed by the big international agencies - in the UK alone there are 2000 directors.

"We've placed high importance on promoting ourselves within the US and UK markets. Advertising agencies in these markets have long-established clients, generate highly sophisticated creative work, and by extension provide for lucrative business."

Its strategy in the first three years was to penetrate those mature markets with the aim of then negotiating a better position in the fastest and biggest emerging markets in the world: China, India and greater Asia.

Traditionally, commercial production houses have focused on their home markets, however the internet has seen corporate clients more willing to globalise their production.

Being Kiwis has also provided The Sweet Shop a certain novelty value, fuelled by Peter Jackson's clean-up at the Oscars and the growing success of home-grown films.

"More and more of the worldwide commercial production industry is sitting up and taking notice [of New Zealand]," said Prince.

Branches in New York and Shanghai are among the company's long-term plans, but for now New Zealand provides enough creative talent to keep production here.

Lots of lolly

* Boutique production house The Sweet Shop was named creative exporter of the year at the Trade and Export Awards last night.
* It exports top Kiwi directors and production crews to make commercials for international advertising agencies.
* The company started four years ago and specialises in commercials for premium brands including BMW, Nike and Sony.