Martinborough Business Assn. 

The Martinborough Business Associations purpose is “Supporting and growing local businesses”

The Wairarapa Economic Development Strategy programme manager met with the Wairarapa towns visitor and business organisations to review and add to some initial work done by the group in identifying the products and services that are in place (or need to be in place) to enable the development of small businesses and especially artisan businesses in the Wairarapa. Without getting into their strategy an outcome is to grow jobs in the Wairarapa through supporting small businesses to be sustainable and grow.

An immediate take out was that we need to collaborate a lot more than we do. There is efficiency in doing so, encourages thinking wider than just our town e.g. think Wairarapa act local and utilisation of a broad set of skills and activities across the organisations to help our businesses.

Our first action is to bring together a calendar of activities so we and our members can get a view on a page on the products, services and supports that are available. 

We know that many small business start-ups fail quite quickly – Sole operators, 50% fail within 4 years, 1 -5 employee businesses, 64% fail in 4 years. Yet the number of small business has been on an upward trend since 2000 350,000 employees to 470,000 employees in 2014 https://www.callaghaninnovation.govt.nz/f-word/failure-facts-and-figures

So, early life support for our member’s new business ventures in particular with will be a focus for our Association. We are keen to further collaborate with the wider Wairarapa group to ensure we capitalise on the resources and opportunities that hopefully will be unlocked.    

Allan Hogg  Chair