Chiropractor's clever manipulation earns award

Bay SportsMed is an award-winning chiropractor clinic.

Patrick Wigley relocated to Tauranga in 2007 with his family to restore their work-life balance after he had built up a successful chiropractic clinic in South Auckland.

He launched new business Bay SportsMed in 2012, which the following year became the first chiropractic or physiotherapy clinic to become a finalist in the Westpac Tauranga Business Awards. This year, they followed up with a win, taking out the Cooney Lees Morgan Small Business Award.

"When we came to Tauranga, I wanted to build an affordable, results-driven, award-winning clinic," said Wigley.

The previous business in Auckland also had a winning record, taking out three regional business awards in 2003.

"The Auckland business really took off, but it got to the point where we started looking at the quality of our lives there and thinking about where we wanted to raise our children."

His wife Virginia was born and bred in Tauranga, so it was an easy decision to relocate to the Bay, where he developed a new business model that had two key goals.

One was to create a multi-disciplinary team offering both chiropractic and physiotherapy.

"Patients walking into the clinic felt they got a very good team approach to their injury."

The other key objective was to only work for three days a week in order to spend the maximum amount of family time with the couple's primary school-aged sons. His wife, after helping him get the practice started, now works for a local corporate.

The business has grown, largely on the strength of referrals, with the first physio Steve Smith now joined by Jason Lai and Tessa Lees. Due to the demand, Wigley planned to add more physiotherapists and another chiropractor in 2016.

The judging panel acknowledged the strength of the work-life balance approach.

"Systems and processes are well-designed and documented and the business is evolving in an organised manner as the owner's personal commitments allow," the judges said.

"It's a great example of a small business doing the things good businesses do, but keeping it simple to reflect the current scale and complexity of the business. The owner shows a understanding of the market, customers, and where the business fits into the environment, that would be the envy of much larger and more mature businesses.