Trade Me takes legal action to force Trade Jobs NZ to change its name and colour

Colleen Getley (left) founder of the Trade Jobs NZ recruitment website, and daughter Kimberley Getley. Photo / Cameron Pitney

Recruitment start-up owner Colleen Getley has found herself in a legal battle with Trade Me after launching a website aimed at tradespeople and their employers. So far, legal bills have cost her $160,000 with no end in sight. Jane Phare reports.

When Colleen Getley’s son-in-law, a glass balustrade fitter, was made redundant during the Covid-19 era, she realised there was an opening for a recruitment company that specialised only in the trades.

He struggled to link up with companies that needed his skills using traditional recruitment sites and asked Getley for advice.

At the same time Getley’s company Getley Recruitments, started 30 years ago, had been hit by Covid after business from international clients, looking for staff to run their New Zealand operations, dried up.

Seeing an opening in the market, Getley, 64, and a grandmother of two, launched Trade Jobs NZ in 2021, a website for employers looking for tradies, and for tradies looking for jobs. Now she’s found herself in a head-on battle with Trade Me which, she claims, is using tactics to stamp out her website.

Colleen Getley, founder of recruitment website Trade Jobs NZ, is locked in a battle with Trade Me. Photo / Cameron Pitney

Six months after her website went live, Getley received a letter from Trade Me objecting to the use of the colour orange in the ‘NZ’ part of Trade Job NZ’s logo and on parts of its website.

Getley wrote back politely, explaining that orange was synonymous with the trade industry – a hi-vis colour used for safety gear, temporary fencing, road cones and the like – and that her social media campaigns to recruit tradies were called “hi-vis campaigns”. She pointed out that the shade of orange used by Trade Me was quite different to that used by Trade Jobs NZ, and declined to change the colour.

Six months after that a more shocking letter arrived. This time Trade Me wanted Getley to not only get rid of the orange colour but to change the company’s name because it objected to the use of the words “trade” and “jobs”.

“We were just flabbergasted. We set up the name quite simply because it explains what we do for that sector.”

From left, Trade Me Job's logo and its standard blue-and-yellow logo, and Trade Jobs NZ's logo ( below).

In March 2023, Trade Me issued proceedings in the High Court against Trade Jobs NZ, and Getley and her husband Tony, who is a shareholder and director of the company. The case will cover the use of the colour orange, trademark infringement and “passing off,” deceptively trying to pass the company off as Trade Me.

So far Getley has spent $160,000 in legal fees and expects that bill to rise considerably before the High Court case is heard in 2026.

Added to that is the time and effort required for demands made by Trade Me under discovery, meaning Getley’s team of 10 spend hours finding relevant business and financial documents, including anything using the words trade and jobs.

“So invasive, so time-consuming and I just feel like they’re just trying to stamp us out,” Getley said.

For the small family company, the issue with Trade Me had been incredibly stressful, she said. Her daughter Kim is the creative lead for Trade Jobs NZ and her partner Liam Munday is general manager.

Kim Getley: “They [Trade Me] have huge resources to throw at this whereas it’s us doing discovery, its time away from doing what we set out to do. It’s distracting and quite frankly unfair.”

Colleen Getley questions why Trade Me has not gone after sites like Trade Staff, Trade Assist, Trade Careers, all within that same industry sector. The Herald asked Trade Me if it had sent letters to those sites but Trade Me declined to answer that question.

In response to other questions, a Trade Me spokesperson said because the matter was before the court it was not appropriate to comment specifically on the case. However, the spokesperson said the company had used the name Trade Me Jobs since 2006.

“It’s an important part of our business. We’ve worked hard to build a distinctive brand that is recognised and trusted by Kiwis.”

Trade Me rarely took the decision to go to court, the statement said.

“We don’t take the decision lightly, it is something we would only consider as a last resort.”

Tradies aren’t sitting in front of a computer

Since launching Trade Jobs NZ, 12,000 tradespeople now have profiles on the site ranging from diesel mechanics and painters to electrical engineers and filtration technicians.

Getley realised that tradespeople often did not have access to a computer during their working day.

“If you’re underneath a vehicle or a builder or a roofer you’re not going to do that.”

Only a small pool of workers would go online at night to look for jobs so Getley set out to “shoulder tap” those who might already be employed but have a specific skill an employer is looking for.

Research showed that tradies almost always had their phones with them and used them for an average of three and a half hours a day. They also listened to the radio. Using Meta algorithms to narrowly target the ideal demographic to find a tradie an employer is looking for, Getley targets skilled trade workers who may not even be looking for a new job.

The methodology means they’ve been able to promote skilled trades jobs in specific regions.

Getley gives an example of a client in Tauranga who was looking for a Class A asbestos supervisor. A supervisor with those skills living in Auckland told Getley he saw the ad repeatedly pop up on his phone and eventually clicked on it.

“He has an interview now. He’d been thinking of going to live in the Mount,” Getley said.

Trade Jobs NZ now has 1200 employers looking for skilled workers, 12,000 tradies with registered profiles on the site, and 4000 jobs. The ads on social media platforms were seen more than 13 million times in the past year.

Getley and her family want to get on and build on that success.

“And in the meantime every month that goes past there is some sort of legal fee and it’s hanging over our head,” she said. “ I feel like it’s almost a game to them, just to kick us out. We are minnows in the pond.”

Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based business, features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of the Weekend Herald and Viva.