High-level seal of approval

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

When the Prime Minister accepted an invitation to open Designer Technology's new offices at Manukau, few were more surprised than the company's directors.

But Helen Clark said Designer Technology was exactly the sort of company the Government wanted to encourage.

"A company like this shows what can be done," she said.

Designer Technology, on Lambie Drive, has come a long way since it began in 1994.

Then, it operated from a spare bedroom in the home of managing director Sean Dick.

Mr Dick said the Designer Technology Group had grown from five employees to 50.

He expected turnover this year to be triple last year's $8 million.

Designer Technology started as a provider of computer support services and a developer of custom software.

But it has since become best known for Mail Marshal, its e-mail content security program.

Mail Marshall was originally written for two Designer Technology customers, Marley and Mainfreight

They wanted a way to protect their e-mail from viruses and other security breaches.

In 1997 a separate company, Marshal Software, was formed to market the program as a shrink-wrapped product, and sales began to climb slowly.

Marshall general manager John Skeates said the breakthrough for the group came when the Love Bug computer virus hit last year.

This had convinced many companies of the need to scan their e-mails.

"Without it, we could have been telling a very different story," Mr Skeates admitted.

Mail Marshall was now used by half of New Zealand's top 40 companies and had attracted some big-name overseas customers, including Nasa in the United States and the London Metropolitan Police in Britain.

But the company noticed that local firms were initially reluctant to use software developed by a New Zealand company.

Last year, the company's marketing director, Martin Oxley, had an inquiry from a person in Wellington who wanted to know where the manufacturer of Mail Marshall was based.

When Mr Oxley said Designer Technology was the manufacturer, the caller replied: "You can't be. The literature says it is world-class software."

The Prime Minister said: "When you hear a story like that, you just have to cringe."

"But maybe we haven't done enough to modernise our image."

She said other countries tended to judge New Zealand by what we sent to them as exports.

The Prime Minister described New Zealand's top exports to Korea - which she had just visited as part of a trade delegation - as being unprocessed aluminium, unprocessed logs and animal skins and hides.

Helen Clark said: "Is this the image of a high-tech country? No it is not."