Many irons in the fire for Shore boy

By KIM WILLIAMS

Competitors of Auckland company Ecco Pacific should have taken more notice of the determined new kid on the block when it started in business eight years ago.

Since its launch in 1992, the Glenfield importing and distributing company's annual turnover has increased twelvefold, and last October it opened its first Australian branch, in Sydney.

The get-up-and-go, stick-to-your-guns attitude of the company was put in place from the beginning when managing director Howard Mackley challenged himself to have the firm up and running within a month.

"I think we started on the first of November [1992], and by the first of December we were trading," the 39-year-old said.

The company ties itself to brands, bringing the products into New Zealand and distributing them to leading retailers and wholesalers.

North Shore-born Mr Mackley, a former Westlake Boys' High School student, credits his company's success to careful client selection, sticking to his guns, and refusing to compromise on goals and standards - even at the risk of missing out on some business.

He is not averse to international phone calls in the wee hours either - it helped score Ecco Pacific's first big contract, with Swatch Telecom.

"I can remember setting my watch to wake up at one in the morning to talk to the [Swatch Telecom] guy in Switzerland, and he'd be in a meeting, so I'd set my alarm for two o'clock ... this was an ongoing thing," he said.

"It took a year and a half of absolute persistence to nail that agency."

It turned out that Swatch Telecom was not actually interested in doing business in the Southern Hemisphere, let alone with "some little company in New Zealand."

"I think it was just getting in front of someone as much as you can ... We wore them down, basically."

Other brands distributed by Ecco (and its consumer product subsidiary, Ventura) include 3M, Bosch, Tefal and Rowenta.

"We knew we couldn't be all things to all people, so we took the high ground, and left a lot of our competitors to fight it out in the commodity low ground," Mr Mackley said.

"While it's more difficult to make sales in the high ground immediately, if you attach yourselves to those brands and take the long-term view - and you spend a lot of time justifying where you are and your customers' customers have experience with those products - you'll get repeat business.

"We realise we miss out on a fair bit of business, but it boils down to that very strong sense of identity, where we want our customers to identify that Ecco will handle only top-end products."

When Mr Mackley and his two silent partners started the business they had a small group of electrical products such as screwdrivers, time switches and cable ties - "the sort of thing you'd find in the back of an electrician's van" - and four staff.

"The whole thing was very much seat of one's pants. We were finding our feet a lot, and we realised that we had to be focused externally - getting those sales, and paying the bills and paying salaries, that sort of thing."

The company now employs 22 staff in Auckland and eight in Sydney, and distributes everything from phone-jacks to irons.

"In a way I'm quite proud of what we've achieved, because we have basically come from nothing, and we've attached ourselves with leading international brands.

"I look at my staff and say, `without them, there's nothing.' I'm like the conductor and they're the orchestra. A conductor on his own is going to be useless."

Mr Mackley said a key focus in his company's vision was its symbiotic relationship with clients.

"At the end of the day, we're not really two separate entities.

"We have the same objective, and that is to get productivity and use it somehow, and the faster and smoother you can do that, the better."

Two coups were contracts with 3M, one of the world's leading manufacturers of electrical, data and communications goods, and Bosch Telecommunications, where once again persistence paid off.

"We just kept knocking on [Bosch's] door, started building relationships with BellSouth [now Vodafone], and a few things fell into place at once," Mr Mackley said.

"We were given some samples, BellSouth said they wanted the product, we established the business and Bosch said: `You guys have got the relationship, you've established the business, you may as well have it.'

"I think a lot of other people would have felt defeated.

"We probably did feel defeated at times, but we continued to put the effort in, and the rest is now history, because we've now established Bosch to be a very strong player in the cellular market in New Zealand."

Ecco Pacific's contract with 3M paved the way across the Tasman. 3M was happy enough with Ecco to offer the company its Australian distribution contract.


Mr Mackley predicts that 50 per cent of this year's turnover will come from Australia, because of the market size and the relatively small number of independent distributing companies there.

"Nobody has a problem dealing with us, because we're not a competitor wholesaler, and a lot of international brands are actually happier dealing with a company that can have access to the whole wholesaling market rather than just part of it."