Your Business: NZ International Business Awards finalists - Ari Sargent, Powershop

Ari Sargent, chief executive of Powershop.

Ari Sargent is the chief executive of power company Powershop.

Can you tell me about the offshore markets that Powershop is in?

Powershop currently operates in New Zealand and Victoria, Australia, and we're approaching 100,000 customers across those markets. We're also launching into New South Wales in the coming weeks. Because of this expansion, and our strong growth in Victoria, we'll see our Australian customer numbers exceed New Zealand numbers well before the end of this year.

We're also in discussions with parties in Singapore and the UK. Having now proven the Powershop customer value proposition and technology in two markets we've been pleasantly surprised by the level of international interest in our product. Managing competing interests from multiple markets is a nice problem to have.

Why have you chosen to focus on these particular markets?

These markets are a focus in part because they're competitive, because Powershop's platform is well suited to competitive retail market environments.

Can you talk me through how you've approached entering some of these markets?

We know Powershop has appeal to electricity customers internationally. Because of that, our brand, technology and intellectual property is valuable to energy utilities in any competitive electricity market. In crude terms we've taken a 'lift and shift' strategy to internationalisation. This has enabled a licensing model that's transferrable to any market, and crucially it doesn't require us to take on large energy market risks.

We've now refined our approach into a process of knowledge transfer and technology customisation - we provide a 'turnkey' retail electricity business that customers seem to love.

Doing business offshore often comes down to the strength of the relationships a company can develop. What's been Powershop's story in this regard?

In all our dealings, we've found that honesty gets you much more appreciation than any amount of corporate smokescreen. No bullshit. No fuss. No confusion.

Our entry into new markets is very much a collaborative process that marries our expertise in delivering an extraordinary customer experience for electricity customers with our partners' local market knowledge, so strong relationships are critical to our success.

So has that required you to have people in-market?

We've found it's feasible to service Australia from New Zealand because of its close proximity in distance and time zone, to the point that we're also able to provide call centre services to Australia from our Masterton contact centre - euphemistically dubbed 'Mumbai'. Our expectation is that markets further afield, like Singapore and the UK, will need a small number of in-market staff, but the majority of work will be done here in New Zealand.

What's a key lesson you've learnt about developing successful offshore relationships that you think would be good to share with other New Zealand businesses?

Make it easy. Your job is to make your customers successful. Be prepared to put in the effort to understand and anticipate their needs, minimise the number of decisions they need to make and to do the hard yards to exceed their expectations.

Coming up in Your Business: What are some of the challenges of developing new products when you're running a small business? How have some business owners managed to do this - and fund it - while still keeping their day to day operations going? If you've got a story to tell drop me a note: nzhsmallbusiness@gmail.com