Some people blame the Government for everything. Jules Smith is not one of them but she could (jokingly) claim that a government voucher system for part-funding small business capability training might force her to leave home.
Smith has a growing business making natural products for dogs and cats called WashBar.
The 30-month-old business has done so well, the product is now made by a contract manufacturer but is still marketed, packaged and distributed from the family home at rural Kokupu, near Whangarei - for now.
WashBar has run out of space because the client base has trebled since Smith implemented the "very robust" business plan she completed under guidance during capability training last year. Smith says: "We were growing anyway. Now we are not just growing, we are really growing."
She was the first person in Northland to win approval for funding after the voucher scheme was launched last May.
The scheme, part of a New Zealand Trade and Enterprise/Ministry of Science and Innovation initiative, issues vouchers matching every dollar an approved business owner spends on capability training with a government dollar, up to a maximum of $5000.
Smith invested $1500 of her own money in training with her chosen provider, Globalliance of Kerikeri, which was matched with government money to create a $3000 training package.
Wouldn't someone with a successful corporate background in Auckland and a growing business have better things to do with her money?
Smith says not. "Sometimes we think we know how to do things but we don't always know how to put all our know-how together to forge ahead," she says.
The assessment of the business after she applied for funding had been an eye-opener, being encouraging about its prospects but frank about deficiencies in analysis of target markets and planning.
"I was told I needed a much more robust business strategy and asked questions like, where do you want to go, what do you want to look like further down the track? Are you recognising the right opportunities?
"The plan set down what we needed to do every month to drive our customer base, and how we should go about it and who we were targeting. It gave us the ability to check off each month how we were progressing, gave us genuine achievable targets to work towards and the confidence to move our business forward, to be able to go to the bank and say, hey, we want an overdraft and you should give us one because we are meeting our monthly targets for growing our client base and we know exactly where we will be next year, and here are the figures to prove it.
"We were supplying between 50 and 60 vet clinics and pet shops around the country when I started working with Globalliance, now we have nearly 200, from Invercargill to Kaitaia.".
"We have had our money well back in terms of the growth of the business and the opportunities we will have to take the business to the next stage."
The next stage is already activated, with WashBar now seeking science and innovation funding to analyse ingredients for new ranges of products.
Jules Smith had casually experimented with making soap before coming north with husband Peter Gregory about three years ago, but developed her first soap for animals in response to a friend's request for a natural product to treat the dog's flea allergy and keep the fleas at bay. Aware of the neem oil's ability to incapacitate insects and assist healing, she formulated a product made from neem oil, neem leaf and Australian-produced tea-tree oil.
Later she developed the product commercially, calling it The Original WashBar.
Customers included owners who were concerned about using chemical topical flea treatments; or wanted a product which could be used between applications of chemical treatments; or were finding the products no longer worked (Smith says fleas are becoming resistant to some chemical treatments).
Smith says nothing's changed in that respect. "All our products are a direct response to what our customers ask for."
The Original WashBar is for washing dogs; the WashBar Dog Bedding Deodoriser is a "sprinkle and vacuum" product; and the newest product is the WashBar Horse and Hound Soap, where the active natural ingredients are neem oil, lemon myrtle essential oil, and a newly available essential oil, pure kanuka.
A product for cats is in the pipeline. Products are tested on humans first (Smith is always one of them) and then go to the canine test panel, made up of a range of dog breeds and sizes.