Born in Dunedin, Mr Jarvis grew up in South Auckland and went to Auckland University, gaining a degree in chemical engineering. After doing his practical work at the now decommissioned Meremere power station near Huntly, he graduated and got a job at the New Plymouth chemicals plant run by Ivor Watkins Dow, now DowAgroSciences, working with mostly agricultural chemicals.
"I was looking to get out of Auckland and it was a good opportunity," said Mr Jarvis, who began as a processing engineer and after seven years wound up as superintendent of the formulations plant. He then moved to the nearby Farmers Fertiliser plant as regional manager.
The late 1990s saw significant consolidation in the fertiliser industry, with BOP Fertiliser merging with the Southland Co-operative in 1997 and buying Farmers Fertiliser from Fernz Corporation a year later. As a result, Mr Jarvis finished up in Tauranga as a regional manager for BOP Fertiliser, which became Ballance Agri-Nutrients in 2001.
But by then, he was fully engaged with running his new business.
"I had been looking to purchase something," said Mr Jarvis, who came across the company through a business broker and bought it from retiring owner Rob Smith.
"It wasn't so much outside my experience, because it was still part connected with fertiliser - it was about controlled environment growing," he said.
At the time, NZ Hydroponics had two arms. One part of the business supplied turnkey hydroponic operations, mostly to the Pacific Islands. The other side saw the company design, develop and market a range of electronic meters, monitors and controllers to enable growers to accurately measure and control parameters such as pH, conductivity and temperature in water-based solutions through each growing phase.
When Mr Jarvis acquired the business it employed about 20 people but, after taking time to get to grips with the business and what made it tick, he decided to sell off the hydroponics side and renamed the company Bluelab in 2004.
"That was because effectively the real intellectual property of the company was its electronic product development," he said. "It was a difficult transformation and effectively halved the turnover."
However, the company now has 30 staff servicing a business with a growing international reputation, which was recognised locally in 2012 when Bluelab won the exporter of the year award at the BNZ Bay of Plenty ExportNZ Awards.
Mr Jarvis said the biggest challenge for the company was product development, in terms of the time and money it took to develop new products. All of the work was done in-house and it could take 18 months to take a new product from concept to being market-ready, he said.
Bluelab has three staff based in California, handling the North American market. That presence will soon be strengthened when the company completes a planned move of senior sales and marketing manager Chris Winslade to head up the US office.
The other strand of Bluelab's export strategy is to increase the company's focus on Europe and the Middle East.
"We are aiming to improve our presence and our distribution in those two geographies," he said. "There are a lot of issues in the Middle East around food security and water supply, which are the big developing trends there."
Management consultant Mr Jones said Mr Jarvis had a rare ability to understand value chains. "A lot of people export and don't really know anything about the market or their customer, but Greg really understands the value chain," he said. "What Bluelab does is deliver value. Technology companies really need to add value and Bluelab does that - not just product value but also relationship value."
Mandy holds fort
Greg Jarvis paid tribute to his wife Mandy Jarvis who works in Bluelab as the company's operations manager.
"She's very much part of the business," he said.
Ms Jarvis is currently in Japan on a project to study lean manufacturing systems and approaches.
The couple have two children, Emma, who is at Auckland University, and Grace at Bethlehem College.
Mr Jarvis said he travelled a lot, which did not leave him much time to develop hobbies, but that he tried to stay fit.
He has also had a long-term involvement with ExportNZ BOP, which he described as one of his touchstones.
"I really appreciate the value that organisation brings to local exporters," he said.
Former ExportNZ BOP executive officer Angela Wallace said Mr Jarvis had been integral in the merger in the Bay of Export NZ and the Employers and Manufacturers Association in 2008.
"It was quite a change in the way ExportNZ was run and Greg helped that union happen in a very positive way and really made a difference for the exporter community."
Doing it yourself
Corporate management experience is not necessarily enough preparation to run your own business, says Bluelab's Greg Jarvis.
"You've got so many more things you have to do yourself," he said. "You don't have that ability to delegate things away. You just have to do it yourself."
The other fundamental difference in running a business was that it was the owner's money that was at stake.
"At the end of the day it's your money, and that really does change your focus in terms of how you think about business and how you react to things that come up," he said.
"You have to think things through in a lot more detail. In a corporate environment you're given a budget and a certain amount of accountability and responsibility.
"And you're allowed to be reasonably autonomous within that.
"But when you're dealing with your own money, you have to really think through what you're trying to achieve with your discretionary spend."
Angela Wallace, the former executive officer of ExportNZ Bay of Plenty, said Mr Jarvis worked incredibly hard.
"He's a really logical, measured guy that you can trust to have his head screwed on," she said.
"He's very respected for the way he approaches things."
Greg Jarvis
Role - Chief executive, Bluelab (since 2000)
Age - 51
Born - Dunedin, New Zealand
First job - Process engineer
Currently reading - The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
