KEY POINTS:
Watching DIY entrepreneur Angela Beer totter down a steep driveway in 10cm heels and designer fur-trimmed coat, it's hard to picture her on a building site. She's clutching an over-sized handbag, not a 30-piece toolkit.
"Sorry I'm late. I took the wrong turning off the motorway," chirps
Beer.
Beer launched Hello Dolly in 2006, with five products, meagre funds and a huge ambition to go global. The range now includes 37 products and another 15 are in the pipeline. It retails in 700 stores throughout New Zealand and 2000 in Australia and Beer has lost track of the international stores carrying the range.
She has also forged partnerships with six distributors operating in Britain, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, Canada, the Middle East and Europe.
Real blokes might scoff at the ultra-feminine Hello Dolly range of DIY tools. Surely the hammer with dainty pink handle and diamantes isn't up for the job?
"Well, that sucks," says one Hello Dolly devotee. "They may weigh less but they do a bloody good job."
Passing through my half-Gibbed hallway, Beer looks unfazed, and yes, she's been through the hassles of renovating.
Beer, 35, has a worldwide following for her range of DIY products. There's a toolkit for the home and garden, and even a raunchy one for the bedroom (think sexy negligee, riding crop and spanking paddle).
"The women who appreciate my brand are intelligent, feminine and have a sense of fun. And men love it too 30 per cent of my customers are men."
Back in New Zealand after nearly six months promoting the brand overseas, Beer says her mother was the inspiration for the DIY brand, after raising four children on her own.
But isn't the pink branding a bit, well, girly? "I've managed to offend a few feminists, but if you don't know I'm taking the piss by calling it 'Hello Dolly' then you don't get the brand. What's more, the colour pink is less a feminist issue and more a practical business decision when you're manufacturing in the thousands- but I do want more colours."
With 12 years' experience in sales and marketing, Beer was a year into researching her idea when a friend entered her for the New Zealand series of Dragons' Den.
In her scene-stealing debut in August 2006, Beer appeared before the potential investors as the fairy godmother of femininity with a team of pink-clad models demonstrating how the idea would bring flair to the soberly constructed tools of the trade.
"I knew it would be a high-risk strategy. I didn't want to look stupid but I was looking for an investor. It was all smoke and mirrors," admits Beer.
"The riding crop was really a fishing rod and the toolkit was spray-painted pink."
Media owner Barry Colman took the bait. Six weeks later, the novice entrepreneur had second thoughts.
"The experience had lots of positives but it was like flirting on national television and finding out afterwards they're really married."
Following the telly exposure, Beer was deluged with offers and, most reassuringly, lots of support from local retailers.
"I realised quickly that I didn't want to sell half my business without understanding what I had."
Declining Colman's offer, Beer searched for partners with global manufacturing experience.
At one point she travelled alone to the Canton Trade Fair in Guangzhou, China.
"I was looking for people who had expertise in manufacturing in China, retail distribution and supply chain logistics. I eventually found that in my distribution partnerships."
Retaining ownership of her company has been worth the risks and personal sacrifices.
As Beer states on her website, Hello Dolly is a New-Zealand-owned business bringing a little magic to mundane purchases.
"Although I've had lots of help and encouragement from mentors like Jack Cooper [husband of designer Trelise]."
Focusing on the future, Beer wants to see "just how far the brand can go".
Tell that to the women who wish the Stud Finder in the DIY builders' toolkit could perform more than one task.
