Downsized Harvest reaping the rewards

The market reach of a tiny Masterton firm that monitors digital whispers from around the globe is matched only by their modesty.
Peter Munn, Harvest Electronics general manager and founder, said the present company of a dozen workers have shunned the limelight since setting up shop in Pragnell Street in 2000 and prefer to "plod along quite happily" without fanfare or fuss.
This is despite seizing upon global niche markets via "the internet, a cellphone, and a box with a solar panel" to monitor railway level crossings throughout New Zealand, sewerage systems in Australia, frost alarm systems in New Zealand, Australia and Italy, and "smart" shopping carts across North America.
Mr Munn, a former Telecom electrical engineer who started Harvest Electronics in Norfolk Road with his final pay when the Masterton toll exchange closed in 1990, had already taken the first incarnation of his company to global success after winning a contract to monitor stock levels in Coca-Cola vending machines.
Seven years ago he sold the company that under him employed 50 people and the firm a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Amatil now known as VMSL this week announced a trial of software developed in Masterton that reconciles credit card payments from 200 vending machines in Australia.
Mr Munn said the re-establishment of Harvest Electronics "moved on from vending machine monitoring and went even narrower" in niche market penetration.
Staying with high-speed data circuits and "thousands of cellphones engines" the company, free of directors and middle managers, targeted railway level crossings and have never looked back.
"We're the only people in New Zealand who monitor railway level crossings and frost alarms are the same, there's no one else doing that either. And who wants to watch sewerage & us, that's who."
Mr Munn said a new generation of stackable children's shopping carts, with onboard DVD screens as well as monitoring equipment that receives instore transmissions, would be trialed at Pak'n'Save in Masterton in the next two months.
"We work on the electronics, the software and the internet stuff another company carries the name and there are other versions of the carts in the pipeline that allow price scanning as well."
Despite the ongoing development of other projects, he said, "the next big thing" for the small company is the monitoring of water.
"There's a million things to monitor. But what we've seen is that water use is coming on for councils everywhere. It's something we really want to tap into and the pun is not intended.
"Councils are putting down bores but need to know how much is being used, and pollution rivers need to be monitored and the water quality checked," he said.
Mr Munn said the internet allows companies to work from anywhere including rural Wairarapa, making his business milieu "a different era for us all totally different especially now cellphones are just an extension of the internet".
"Small companies are always a threat to big companies. We are very nimble and can move quicker and be more innovative. They have to calculate margins and capital expenditure forecasts and make presentations to boards and so on.
"Our overheads are very low, our advertising budget is zero and our premises aren't in Queen Street. Out at Norfolk Road there were 50 workers and constant trips to America. It was getting difficult and expensive.
"Australia is nice and close and with the rising cost of petrol, and the internet, you can work from anywhere. I mean most of our workers came here for the lifestyle.
"There are companies like ourselves in every region across the country but for a New Zealand firm to make it, it's no good trying to take on the world, trying to take on China or North America. The big players will beat you," he said.
"Our advantage is that we can survive very well on margins they wouldn't even begin to consider. They don't want hundreds of units they want millions.
"And our decisions can be made in a heartbeat. Then you just keep your head down and get on with it.
"Maybe only one in every 10 proposals will make it, but we can think up an idea over lunch and it's happening that afternoon seems to works for us anyway."