KEY POINTS:
Shaun Ryan prefers not to play the Kiwi card when signing up clients in the United States. It is not necessarily a selling point for his internet search company SLI Systems, he says.
But, run out of Christchurch and employing 40 staff, the company is exceptionally Kiwi. Chief
executive Shaun Ryan and his brother Grant are the sons of a chicken plucker from Invercargill.
Grant Ryan's entrepreneurial idea to create internet search technology that would bring up popular searches came to him when he was lying on the couch in 1998.
In 2000 the technology, called GlobalBrain, was sold to American company NBCi. When it went under in 2001 Shaun Ryan bought back the technology and set up on his own, calling his business SLI Systems. Grant Ryan now sits on the board of directors.
Fast-forward seven years and SLI Systems is an American-registered company that builds and improves the search technology for 300 websites across the world, and receives 100 million queries per month.
It is SLI Systems' technology that brings up a range of digital cameras when a Dick Smith customer types "digital camera" into the company's website search panel.
And the technology is also behind the searches on Qantas, Statistics New Zealand and the Treasury in the United Kingdom.
But most of SLI Systems' clients are American online retail companies.
Ryan said it was well-placed to take advantage of the market's shift towards selling through the web.
"Online retail is growing, it's forecast to grow by 16 per cent this year even though normal retail is fairly flat or declining in the United States."
The price of petrol, increasingly busy lifestyles and a greater acceptance of internet shopping is driving the online retail market, he said.
While New Zealand has been slower on the uptake, Ryan is starting to see a lot of the retailers put some serious consideration into their online presence.
With a marketing team based in the US and a small number of staff based in the UK, Ryan said most of SLI's clients had no idea the company was from Christchurch.
"We don't lie to them but we have set ourselves up as an American company, we look like an American company and we deal with Americans - they just assume it's an American company they are dealing with.
"There's no real advantage from a marketing side of coming out of New Zealand. If we were selling food or something there would be, but we don't highlight that," Ryan said.
The strategy has worked well with the company experiencing "hockey stick" growth 50 per cent in the past year.
He is in discussions with investors and financial advisers over an initial public offering but will hold out for the right time.
SLI Systems runs off clients' monthly payments and is investing everything into growing its client base and improving the search capability, he said.