Big Save founder shares success story

SECRETS TO SUCCESS: Ray McKimm says more companies should relocate to Napier as it was a natural logistics centre. PHOTO/DUNCAN BROWN

Ray McKimm was expelled from school after advertising the principal's Humber Super Snipe for sale at a very low price and inviting people to view it.

It was one of many anecdotes the Big Save Furniture founder shared at a Napier City Council-organised Business Breakfast yesterday.

He told the Napier War Memorial Conference Centre audience that he was selling cars in the United States when he returned home following his father's heart attack.

He had a successful boat-building business but, after giving a furniture retailer a 50 per cent deposit on a lounge suite that would take two years to deliver, the 22-year-old started Big Save in Paraparaumu in 1973.

The industry conspired against its value-for-money success - Big Save was the country's first furniture retailer to advertise on TV - forcing him to buy stock from Auckland manufacturers with cash.

He said more companies should relocate to Napier as Big Save had. It was a natural logistics centre with good rates available on the many empty shipping containers brought to Napier Port for export goods.

Big Save has grown to be the largest furniture retailer in New Zealand with 24 stores and Mr McKimm one of the region's major property owners. The Ahuriri Business Park, the 5.6ha former British and American Tobacco manufacturing site, has been a success and he said his many tenants reported buoyant business.

He is the landlord for the Business Hub, the country's first one-stop-shop for business growth agencies, which would "grow business like nothing else".