Buy Kiwi aims to support and strengthen NZ’s small businesses

Jamie Farmer started Buy Kiwi to support local businesses during the pandemic.

The online store features Kiwi-only businesses from around the motu (country). With plans to expand to the grocery space, Farmer says the company
is determined to bring affordable Kiwi products to online shoppers.

What does Buy Kiwi do?

Buy Kiwi is a brand new e-commerce platform built only for Kiwi-owned businesses to connect with Kiwi consumers.

Buy Kiwi has been built on the philosophy that supporting Kiwi-owned business is good for our New Zealand communities and our economy.

We believe together, we can help New Zealand thrive and prosper by connecting Kiwis to a huge selection of Kiwi-owned businesses.

This is underpinned by the principle that the more dollars we keep in New Zealand rather than sending to overseas companies, the more it helps our local communities thrive and prosper.

For Kiwi business owners, we offer a low-cost, low-effort solution to connect with Kiwis. In many cases, our Buy Kiwi business owners are onboarded in less than 15 minutes and their products are live on Buy Kiwi the next day.

When did you start the business? What motivated you to start the business?

We have been working on Buy Kiwi for more than three years and commenced our soft launch in January 2023.

Our first and foremost motivation was around the desire to help. We saw the challenges Kiwi businesses were facing with lockdowns, changes in consumer behaviour, and their struggles with implementing eCommerce solutions.

Kiwi businesses have had a really tough three years and we wanted to help with a cost-effective low-effort solution.

We also know supporting Kiwi businesses is great for New Zealand and our local communities.

Our research confirmed Kiwis are keen to support Kiwi companies but want confidence it really is a Kiwi company, and they must be easy to find and to shop with.

We wanted to provide a solution that gave Kiwis confidence they were supporting Kiwi-owned businesses and make it easy to do so.

And we wanted to help with the future prosperity of New Zealand, as it is good for all of our kids’ futures.

What are your best-selling products?

At the moment it would be around the DIY segment and probably reflective of the recent weather events and Kiwis getting their homes back in order after the unfortunate impacts.

Toys and maternity are two other strong segments – we have some world-class products from Mums and Bubs on Buy Kiwi.

We are even seeing water pumps as a quite popular item.

Why is it important to support local businesses?

When we support local businesses we’re also supporting communities, as local businesses help to create and retain local jobs by keeping more money in the country. If every Kiwi diverted just $50 per week spent with overseas companies to New Zealand-owned businesses, it would deliver $250 million per week back into the local economy.

How big is your team?

Our team is really a collection of business partners who bring specialised skills to the Buy Kiwi business model.

For example, our team of four at Buy Kiwi are supported by our 100 per cent Kiwi-owned customer service call centre partner 2B Connected based in Christchurch.

We have access to a phenomenal range of resources from all of our business partners. We can never know or do everything so we invest time in developing our business model with best-in-class business partners.

Are you looking to expand to the grocery market?

It is an option we are keen to explore and see a real opportunity for increased pricing transparency and choice to support Kiwi-owned.

A potential opportunity here is for suppliers to connect directly with consumers that we plan to do more work on.

What is your advice to people looking to start their own business?

Understand your customers and what they really want, why they buy and how much they are prepared to pay.

Invest time to seek out the best partners with aligned values and vision- this will save you an enormous amount of time and help gain access to invaluable information and insights.

Be a great listener, and listen to understand and not just hear. Learn to accept the fact it really doesn’t matter what you think, it is what your target market thinks that matters most.

Be prepared to be more resilient and flexible than you probably have ever been before, it often gets harder before it gets easier.

Read the book “The Lean Start Up” by Eric Ries – the most logical and insightful business book I have read.