Pigment firm's founder impresses investor

Brent Ogilvie. Photo / Dean Purcell

Angel investor and promoter Brent Ogilvie is tickled pink about his latest investment, colour company D'Arcy Polychrome.

The startup - which has come up with a way to encapsulate and deliver colour through dry pigments to colour paint, concrete and plaster - has a disruptive technology, solid IP position and large and multiple potential markets on its hands.

But ask Brent Ogilvie, angel investor and director of science and technology investment firm Pacific Channel, what attracted him to back the Auckland-based company and he'll tell you first and foremost it was the person behind the venture, founder Rachel Lacy.

"She has an enormous amount of energy, as well as experience in the paint industry," Ogilvie explains. "Her mother had a chain of upmarket paint stores in New Zealand and her father is an architect, so she literally grew up in that paint and decorative industry.

"So when she said she had identified a niche you're more likely to believe that and it's easier to get the data to validate that."

Pacific Channel was also impressed by overwhelming expressions of interest in the technology from the paint and concrete industries.

The incumbent technology to tint paint involves dispersing a limited range of liquid colourants through a tinting wheel at your local paint shop. But changing the form in which colour comes - from liquid to dry - opens up a world of new possibilities, including the ability to buy colour separately from a base paint, to distribute it directly online, or develop whole unique colour palettes for high profile designers.

The company now has its first customer, Sto, a billion-euro turnover premium paint company, which is using D'Arcy's "drikolor" system in Australasia.

The company closed a second round of investment in May, bringing in more than $500,000.

Pacific Channel focuses on companies in the clean-tech and material and life sciences sectors. The firm looks for proprietary technology, a substantial marketplace, and people with deep expertise and passion for their field who they can work with, says Ogilvie says.

As an angel Ogilvie says he tries to focus his efforts on what he can he execute at the micro level; helping to develop the D'Arcy Polychromes of our country, for example.

Produced in association with the Angel Association New Zealand. The Angel Association is an organisation that aims to promote angel investment in New Zealand and create a greater pool of capital for innovative start-up companies. Go to www.angel association.co.nz.