Mountain Jade won the supreme award in the Rotorua Business Awards.
“Everything I create, it’s going to last forever,” head carver and lead artist Tamaroa Walker, of Rotorua’s Mountain Jade, says.
Pounamu specialist Mountain Jade was crowned Supreme Overall winner of the Tompkins Wake Rotorua Business Chamber awards at a glitzy ceremony on Saturday night. It also won the Deloitte Retail award.
Walker said his taonga were “inspired by the korero” with people understanding their past, present and future.
Pounamu are a traditional Māori taonga, a prized object. They are often gifted on significant occasions as a symbol of honour and respect. Many pounamu meanings stem from historical accounts of Māori life and the rich mythological and spiritual beliefs Māori hold.
Walker said it was a “big responsibility” to create family heirlooms.
He said handing over a taonga to its new owner could often be “quite emotional”.
“They are going to be family heirlooms for a very long time.”
When asked about taonga etiquette and if people should be gifted their first pounamu, Walker said people could purchase their own taonga with “the intention of one day handing it on” to future generations.
“It’s never really yours because it’s going to be here long after you leave,” he said.
A Mountain Jade carving of pounamu, a traditional Māori taonga.
Mountain Jade chief executive Sam Hulton said he believed the business won because of its storytelling and reinvention of traditional retail.
“We connect the customers to the artists and the stone. We take an approach to retail where it’s not about us, it’s never about us.”
Hulton said no two taonga were the same.
When Hulton took over the business in 2019, it was operating in a “very traditional retail model”, which was “essentially putting products on shelves and customers transacting them through the till”, he said.
Mountain Jade store manager Jade Goldsmith (left), CEO Sam Hulton, and head carver Tamaroa Walker with the company's awards. Photo / Andrew Warner
Reinventing the customer experience by weaving the “experimental side of retail” into their product, in Hulton’s eyes, changed public perception.
