Kiwis are renowned home improvement do-it-yourselfers and now a homegrown online retailer, Trade Tested, is taking on giants like Bunnings and Mitre 10 in a $3 billion-a-year sector.
Like lots of start-ups, this one began with a garage. But instead of starting the business inside one, the idea was to sell them.
Trade Tested founder Richard Humphries had been working alongside Sam Morgan at Trade Me while importing a bunch of products on the side, sourced from a very early version of Alibaba in China.
"I was selling refurbished cellphones from Singapore but, when Dad needed a shed for his farm in Central Otago, I started doing some digging," says Humphries. "Every back yard needs a shed, so the idea was to order a few. I found a factory owner online and pretty soon I was sitting on a bus five hours outside of Shanghai – on my way to meet a supplier I'd only met online."
That's when things got complicated. It quickly became clear that the supplier had ambitions to start a factory of his own, but no actual factory. In spite of language barriers, he and the supplier got on well and sealed a deal for 500 sheds destined for Kiwi back yards.
Back in New Zealand, with the sheds on the way, he needed a website - quick. After a crash course in coding and a lot of coffee, tradetested.co.nz went live in 2010. He left Trade Me, got a desk at the Icehouse Incubator and shoulder-tapped a couple of mates, Terry Metcalfe and Matt Weavers, to help get things off the ground.
"Back then, local online shopping barely existed. Outside of TradeMe there was Mighty Ape, Torpedo7 and Trade Tested. None of the big brands wanted to touch it. It's crazy to see how things have exploded. Today it's nearly 20% of the entire retail market," Humphries says.
The sheds arrived, the website was live but people weren't buying: "The key thing we were trying to do, and still do today, is to get Kiwis to trust our start-up with their hard-earned money. After trying a bunch of changes to the website, a customer suggested we add a big 0800 number. Half an hour after updating it the phone rang. We all looked at each other, not sure what to do. Terry picked it up and made a sale. It was remarkable," says Weavers.
Sheds started to sell well, really well. As Trade Tested grew, they found another niche - selling bulky products to lifestyle blockers, products traditional retailers couldn't fit on the shelf. That wasn't without its issues either.
"About three years in, one Friday our key freight company said they were sick of delivering our large products around the country and pulled the plug," says Humphries. "We had a backlog of about 100 orders and no way to deliver them so we hired a truck, and spent a week delivering around Auckland. Lifting things like bbq's and outdoor furniture was tough work."
Today Trade Tested stock almost 4000 products covering everything for the traditional Kiwi back yard. In normal years, the team are typically off sourcing around the world from outdoor furniture in Vietnam to tiny houses from Estonia – and, of course, sheds.
Humphries still visits his first supplier regularly – and he now owns a bunch of factories and exports all around the globe.
"It's such an international market these days with everyone online, but you can't beat talking to someone and seeing what they do face to face," he says. "Whether we're popping down to Hawkes' Bay to check out some wine barrels, or travelling to Estonia when it's 20 below freezing to see how their cabins handle the snow, people everywhere are passionate about what they make.
"It's been awesome and it gives us confidence that Kiwis will like it too."
These days Trade Tested has over 350,000 customers and is turning over a substantial $70m this year alone. Not bad for a homegrown, independent Kiwi business.
However, as Weavers says, they still have a long way to go. As online retail continues to grow at exponential rates, Trade Tested's trajectory is way beyond their original expectations: "We're on the way to becoming a household name. Watch this space."