Smarty Pants - Te Kuiti
A grant from NKCDT enabled us to take this fledgling idea and expand it to commercial viability.
We identified that there was a need to support parents and caregivers in helping children who are kinaesthetic learners (that is they learn by doing rather than reading/writing). While there are many craft kits and activities on the market, none of these made the link between national learning standards in the school system and creative play at home.
Parents are often time poor to assemble the needed resources and may not have the educational knowledge to expand activities to learning outcomes. We wanted to create a link between enjoyable family activities and supporting parents to extend activities so they became relevant to learning standards.
Family values were an important part of this concept and we developed the 5 point learning star as means of communicating our holistic learning approach.
The grant from NKCDT in 2012 enabled us to take this fledgling idea and expand it to commercial viability. There was a huge amount of work behind the scenes in developing appropriate activities, sourcing affordable resources and
documenting how these are relevant to the national curriculum. This had to be interpreted to both a learners' guide and a care givers' guide that was easily understood without too much educational jargon.
The NKCDT grant enabled us to support a part time employee to organise and assemble kit components and to continue developing and marketing new ideas. In addition the grant provided essential funds for the implementation of an online stock control system. This enabled us to integrate our POS and e-commerce operations to better manage our multi-platform marketing. Finding the right fit between small enterprises and the big corporates was a challenge with small, rural enterprise options often being too low key and the corporate models being unaffordable. The rapidly growing cloud based options have enabled us to make the transition that was originally researched through the NKCDT grant.
"Thank you NKCDT – without funding like this it would be extremely difficult to keep pace with a rapidly evolving business world."
Kim Fagan, Director
Cruise FM was the recipient of a grant with the sole purpose of delivering a community radio station to the North King Country.
Cruise FM was started in the worst part of the recession and the fact that we are still going in spite of the current economic times is both a positive to us and the community of the North King Country. As the owner of Cruise FM, I'm very happy that the community brought into Cruise FM and businesses followed wanting to advertise and market their services to our listeners. Cruise FM has played an important part in helping local businesses grow their revenue which helps our local economy.
A big thank you must go out to the trustees of the North King Country Development Trust who believed I could deliver on the promise of a local sounding commercial radio station. Without your initial belief in my project, Cruise FM may not have flown to the heights of today in our North King Country community.
I strongly believe that if you have a business plan that you think will grow the North King Country economy that you should contact a trustee of the North King Country Development Trust.
Johnny Dryden - Owner
Call Val - Driving Service
Val Parry of Call Val says her business, previously known as Ab-Zalutely Waitomo, instantly benefitted from the trust’s assistance.
“I would like to acknowledge the mentoring system in place at North King Country Development Trust and show mega appreciation and gratitude to Bruce Maunsell who was assigned to help me,” she says.
“After 15 months in business, the majority of Te Kuiti did not know of my business.
“But, thanks to a name change, a bit of ‘bling’ on my van and a different promotional approach (flyers delivered in mailboxes) the word is starting to spread.
“What a great service the trust provides and thanks to their mentoring system I plan to continue delivering my business for many years to come. Thank you North King Country Development Trust.”
Any North King Country resident wanting assistance or guidance with a business or social development idea is welcome to contact the trust and apply for support.
PROVIDED WITH: Business Mentoring