The price of success

Ewan McGregor - Book The Price of Success

Retired Waipawa farmer Ewan McGregor has produced an incredibly detailed account of the 125 years of the iconic stock and station agency — Williams and Kettle Ltd — and its presence in Tairawhiti features heavily.

Through the W&K story the writer has, in the words of the last W&K chairman John Bayly, “painted an excellent background of pastoral and agricultural development in New Zealand.”

The 171 pages of “The Price of Success” have been packed full of information and photographs.

The story covers the establishment of Williams and Kettle in the late 1800s and its links to the Richardson shipping company that delivered goods to isolated coastal communities here, and picked up the wool.

It covers all the highs and lows through to the takeover by Wrightsons in 2005.

Mr Bayly said in his foreword to the book that he had been especially proud of the company’s standing in the district, with 75 percent of the stock and station market share.

“Surely this can be seen as a glowing endorsement of the success of Williams and Kettle.”

He said Mr McGregor had “captured the heart and soul” of the company.

“There was concern, sadness and inevitably some anger at the takeover by Wrightsons and some clients offered six figure sums to help the company resist it,” Mr Bayly said. “But in the final analysis the die was cast, as is explained in the final chapter of the book.”

Mr McGregor was approached a decade after the takeover by former chief executive John Nott and his old executive team, to write the W&K history.

He covers all of the W&K divisions — livestock, wool, merchandise, grain and seed and real estate, and the old branches — Ruatoria, Gisborne, Wairoa, Hastings, Waipawa, Waipukurau and Dannevirke.

“The latter part of the company’s life was a time of great change and challenge for farming commerce in New Zealand,” Mr McGregor said.

“I’m sure that history alone was not the only reason for wanting to have that period of the firm’s life on permanent and public record.

“How could the demise of W&K have happened? The demise of such a cherished commercial institution?

“I will leave it up the reader to draw his or her own judgment,” Mr McGregor said in his preface in the book.

“I set out to write a book that would be of interest to more people than just W&K former clients.

“Accordingly I have broadened my brief, and to look at the great, but now largely disintegrated, stock and station industry through the prism of W&K — its unique culture and honour, its fraternity and loyalty.”

“Ironically, in restructuring Kettles in the final three decades of its life to face the future, they provided a rich and irresistible prize for a bigger national company to take over.

“Such was the price of success!”

Copies of the book remain available at PGG Wrightson’s branches.