Sir Michael Hill’s fame, fortune and rise as one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs was born out of disaster.
“We went to the pictures one night and we came out and heard our home was on fire ... that night I lost everything, and I have the most incredible memory of it pouring with rain as I rushed up to the house ... I remember standing there watching it [burn],” Hill recalled of the 1979 inferno.
The 40-year-old Hill had already spent decades working in his uncle’s jewellery store – and it was that moment, with nothing to his name, that he decided to go out on his own.
“It made me realise I’d been playing life too safe,” he said.
From his first store in 1979, the business grew to become a global retail jewellery brand with more than 250 outlets spanning Australia, New Zealand and Canada at the time of Hill’s death at 86 on Tuesday.
Born in Whangārei in 1938, Hill was educated at Whangārei Boys’ High School before leaving at the age of 16 to become a concert violinist.
“I was bullied at school. I felt very insecure, very nervous. Those first 25, 30 years weren’t much fun at all.” Hill once told the Herald.
When his musical ambitions didn’t work out, Hill began working for his uncle at the family jewellery store.
“My parents and uncle demanded I give up this folly and get a real job,” Hill said.
He took over the store’s newspaper and radio advertising and began to draw attention to the business with what became his signature style.
That knack for advertising came in very handy when Hill launched his own store.
“Hello, Michael Hill. Jeweller,” his television advertisement would always begin, sparking imitation from viewers in living rooms across the nation.
“It just took off like a complete tidal wave – it was quite extraordinary,” Hill said.
“I started out saying ‘Hello. Michael Hill’ [on television ads] then I eventually refined that by saying ‘Hello. Michael Hill. Jeweller’.
“We’ve all heard that and it became quite a catchphrase,” Hill said.
Ambitiously, Hill aimed to open seven stores in his first seven years of business. By 1986, he’d opened eight.
The following year, he floated his company on the New Zealand Stock Exchange and drew enough capital to launch in Australia. The company now has more than 200 stores across New Zealand, Australia and Canada, according to its website.
“I had this crazy advert when I started in Australia [that went] ‘Hello. Michael Hill. Jeweller’ and ‘gold gold silver silver chain chain sale sale’,” Hill said.
“It went ballistic.”
Hill said he remembered school buses of children spotting him on the street and repeating the catchphrase back to him in public.
Eventually the gimmick that had driven his success was scrapped. He explained why in a 2015 NZ Herald interview.
“We were getting too whacky. I was doing ads underwater in aqua lungs, you know; ‘blub, blub, blub Michael Hill Jeweller’. So it was time for a change. To be successful in business, you can copy others or you can take a totally unique position. Lately, we’ve been copied to such a degree that we need to shake them off.”
His next campaign debuted at the Superbowl in 2015.
“We got 1.4 million hits the next day. It was quite cheeky, we had the advert then on the end just put ‘Michael Hill’. So everyone was texting, ‘who the heck’s this?’. We’ve also been on in cinemas with 50 Shades of Grey, God help us. Those ads really sink in when you see them on the big screen. They usually have me in tears,” Hill said.
The campaign to launch in the US in 2010 had seen his brand associated with reality TV star and social media influencer Kim Kardashian. The partnership didn’t last.
“We probably didn’t pursue it long enough but then, is she quite the image in the long run? I mean the family’s gone a bit loopy. Isn’t the father having a sex change or something? So probably it worked out for the best,” Hill said in the 2015 interview.
With him every step of the way has been his wife, Christine Hill. The pair met at the family jewellery store.
Married in 1965, the couple recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. They have a son, Mark Hill, and a daughter, – Emma Hill. She has long been part of the family business and remains a director, having been executive chair from 2015-2021.
Emma Hill spoke to the Herald earlier this year about her role in the family business and her parents’ impact on her own career.
“I’ve always drawn great strength from Dad’s boundless enthusiasm and positive outlook to business, and from my mother’s incredibly pragmatic advice.”
Growing up, there was a downside to her father’s fame.
“I was a teenager when dad did those ads, and it was a bit embarrassing for a teenager, your Dad becoming a household name ... it was crazy,” Emma Hill said in 2019.
Hill was a proud father.
“My daughter Emma is very much the businesswoman. She spent five years setting up our business in Canada. My son Mark’s the artistic one. He’s a fulltime sculptor. So we’ve got the yin and the yang.
“If you take all the great brands, they all have a very powerful artistic side which gives them a point of difference. Our children live on our 200 hectares of beautiful land in the Wakatipu Basin where the golf course is, and they’re our best friends,” Hill said in 2015.
Despite his overwhelming success, the bespectacled businessman also had his failures. In 1992, he launched his ill-fated footwear business, Michael Hill Shoes.
Hill bought out a small Christchurch chain of high-end Italian footwear and launched the previous owner, who stayed on, into the quite different world of mid-range, fast-turnover footwear.
In his autobiography, Hill analysed what went wrong.
“[It] turned out to be a series of colossal mistakes,” he wrote. He’d put the jewellery chain manager in charge of the shoe operation, meaning he couldn’t focus fully on either job. Nine shops opened across the country in quick succession, instead of concentrating on getting one region right first. Hill also confused his customers by naming the stores Michael Hill Shoes and putting them next to the jewellery stores.
Hill pulled the plug on the faltering sideline early in 1994.
“Michael Hill, golfer” was a far more successful enterprise.
The Hills golf course in Arrowtown opened in 2007 but it had been in the works for several decades before that. Michael and Christine Hill “fell in love with the Arrowtown area” during a holiday in the 1980s. They then purchased farmland on McEntyre’s Hill to build their home. They continued to acquire the surrounding farmland over the following three decades. Michael Hill had a putting green built in his front garden and then expanded it with tees and bunkers to form several par-three holes.
Now The Hills has 18 holes and the championship course has hosted the New Zealand Golf Open and is among the most exclusive golf clubs in New Zealand. In typical Hill fashion, the course is utterly unique, featuring large-scale sculptures on many holes – some created by Hill’s son, Mark Hill, the acclaimed artist.
“The Farm”, an additional nine-hole course, opened in 2019 and winds its way close to the Hills’ family home.
Last year, the Hills entered a partnership with US private equity investor Ric Kayne and business partner Jim Rohrstaff, the duo behind Tara Iti and Te Arai Links near Mangawhai, to redevelop The Hills.
When Hill was knighted in 2010, he told the Herald it was “a great responsibility” and that people would look to him “as a role model”.
He offered one piece of advice – to “find a goal”. “It’s the most difficult thing to have. It took me 40 years and a house fire to do it,” Hill said.
“It makes an enormous difference. Once we start moving, everything starts to gravitate towards you. It’s like a surfer struggling to get a wave, then you push yourself a little and you’re moving.”
Hill was asked in 2015 if he had retired.
“I hate that word. I hope not. If you find there’s no reason to bounce out of bed first thing in the morning to achieve your goals, all the switches are going to rapidly switch off. We notice a lot of people our age are always talking about someone who has died. Their dominant thoughts are about dying. I don’t like talking about death, I don’t like thinking about it.
In that same interview, he was asked if he planned to live forever.
“I do actually. Well, obviously we can’t but we’re going to give it a good shot.”
Incredibly health-conscious, Hill had always cut a trim figure.
“I eat no sugars, fried food or sodas. If I do drink, it’s white wine mainly,” he said.
Hill will be remembered as a businessman who built a global brand from the ashes of his home and never lost aspiration.
“Here’s another thing I have learned in life: nothing is perfect. That’s what keeps you striving for more.”