B2B Inspired
B2B Inspired, the podcast by BlueOcean - The B2B Agency, is all about exploring the ins, outs, ups and downs of B2B Marketing here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We'll uncover emerging trends and thinking while sharing inspiring real-world stories from B2B Marketers here in New Zealand. With the goal of supporting New Zealand’s B2B Marketing community in becoming one of the best and brightest anywhere in the world, let’s roll up our sleeves and take on tomorrow together.
B2B Inspired
From Garage to Global: The Shot Darts Story
What does it take for a small family business from Katikati to become the world’s third-largest dart manufacturer? In this episode, Peter McCormick, Managing Director of Shot Darts, shares the pivotal moments behind their global rise. From a bold rebrand sparked by a legal battle with Puma AG to building a brand grounded in authentic storytelling and Kiwi grit, Peter reveals what it means to scale with purpose. Hear how persistence—like calling on one customer for seven years—paid off, and how embracing their heritage shaped products that resonate worldwide. Peter also shares how community leagues and cultural design turned darts into a global lifestyle. For business owners exploring international growth, brand strategy, or succession, this episode is packed with insights grounded in real B2B experience.
For more B2B insights, ideas and opportunities, head to www.blueoceanagency.co.nz
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Let’s roll up our sleeves and take on tomorrow together.
Kia ora and welcome back to B2B Inspired the podcast by Blue Ocean, where we unpick the ins, outs, ups and downs of all things business to business here in Aotearoa, new Zealand, from emerging trends and thinking to the inspiring real world stories and experiences of smart, good people from within our ecosystem. We're here to help the New Zealand B2B community to become one of the best, boldest and brightest anywhere in the world. Now if, like me, you live and breathe all things business to business and you're looking for a place to connect, learn and be inspired, you have come to the right place. Now let's join Lee Hunter over in the studio.
Speaker 2:Welcome to a B2B inspired podcast by Blue Ocean. Today we're joined by Peter McCormack, managing Director of Shot Darts, a New Zealand-owned company that began in the 70s when Peter's father, john McCormack, founded Puma Darts. From humble beginnings with a single dart machine, shot Darts has become a globally recognized brand, now exporting to over 70 countries. So, peter, thanks for joining us today. Today we're going to unpack a bit about how a small business in Katikati became a global player, the role of innovation and creativity in your product design, and then getting an understanding of you on who you partnership and who you leverage to get to the scale that you are. But before we get into any of that, can you tell us a bit of background about how this all started?
Speaker 3:yeah it's. You know it's a long story into um, save everyone listening through a big one is in theory. My father took over the business in 1970s. It was a local catty catty guy that was making some dartboards in his garage and who happened to sadly pass away and my grandfather was his accountant. So he recommended to my dad hey, there's a guy here that's making a handful of dartboards here, maybe this is something that could be a business. And my dad, pure Kiwi entrepreneur he took the punt. And I was six months old and he moved us from Auckland, quit his job as an accountant in Auckland to come down to Kedikedi and start making dartboards. He had no idea he hadn't made anything in his life but he thought there was an opportunity there and just that pure Kiwi entrepreneurial spirit that got it all started and it was just built and built from there.
Speaker 2:So you started off with an existing dartboard manufacturer and then grew into the darts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just a pure simple paper dartboard machine which is put it something you understand. It's like the end of a toilet roll. It's cardboard, round, round, round, round, very tight, and then printed on and that's nowadays. We call that a toy in the industry. It's a toy little board, but that's what we made, and we made those from till about 1978, before we stopped making those and focused more on the bristle boards.
Speaker 2:And when did the dart manufacturing part kick in?
Speaker 3:Again in the late 70s and again, typically what happened was we were making the dart boards and of course people wanted darts with it. Dad was buying them in, particularly from England, buying all the parts we had. For those people that are a bit older remember T-chests. We used to get T-chests that were full of feather dart flights shipped in from England and I remember playing as a kid on the big piles of T-chests in the back of the factory. So he'd do all that and assemble it and Dad quickly worked out that actually, no, this wasn't going to work. A it was too long a lead time, it was too difficult and if he wanted to be a success he had to start making it himself. So he went out and started making the darts as well, got some machines, brought in a few engineers, which one of them was a guy by the name of Roy Robertson, who was Dad's factory manager there for at least 40 years, who happened to be the son-in-law of the guy that built the first machine. Oh wow. So that's quite a cool little inter-family legacy.
Speaker 2:Now, if rumours are correct, I understand one of the machines you built almost took out the entire power of Caddy. Caddy is that right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had a high frequency welder that used to weld the spiders and people around town couldn't work out that about every 30 or 40 seconds their power lights would flicker. And that was because that was when we activated that machine and it took a number of years for people to work out. Actually that was us. So, yeah, we had to go through a whole process with I guess it was Powerco in those days to put a big new transformer right outside the factory just for us.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, a little bit unique, absolutely so let's focus on the elephant in the room. Initially it was Puma Darts, and probably most people listening today recognize Puma. We're now called Shop Darts, yep. How did that happen? What was the instigator and how did it eventually?
Speaker 3:Again. So Puma came about because there was a guy in Taupo who was making a bristled dart dartboard or was trying to develop them and didn't get there and, for whatever reason, sort of gave up and and dad heard about this guy. So he turned up and brought the plant and equipment from this guy and one of the assets of that business was a brand name called Puma. So dad thought, well, it's a pretty good name for darts and dartboards. So we started selling under Puma and we'd done that for a few years and Dad got a letter, as you're used to in those days, from Puma AG you know the footwear clothing German giant saying they wanted to start selling their clothing in New Zealand but obviously couldn't because we owned the rights. So Dad wrote them back and said look, no worries, as long as you don't get in the Dart and Dartboard business, it's not a problem. So we co-existed in New Zealand and Australia for a number of years but as we started expanding, eventually we got a few letters back from them saying what are you doing using the Puma brand name into other markets? So Dad did the right thing and wrote them back a letter quoting the letter he signed to them saying hey, we want to sell our dartboards in these other countries. And they said go and jump on a lake.
Speaker 3:So we ended up in a very long court case that was five to seven years in the High Court of Mauritius, of all places battling over who owned the artwork into various countries. And at the end of that we won that case. We got our legal fees covered, et cetera. But at the end of that the German lawyer just looked at me and said well, now we'll have a crack at you in the next country, and we didn't have the budget to compete against a multinational like those guys. So we had to rebrand. So we went out and developed the shop brand. But it was also really good for us because we didn't understand a brand in those days and whilst we had the Puma brand, over half of what we were making was stuff for other people and OEM brands. We were even making stuff for our competitors Some of our biggest competitors today. We used to make for it, but we just made it under their brands. So it was actually as much as at the time. It was chaos and immensely stressful and immensely expensive, but it was the best thing for the business To rebrand into something that we could do.
Speaker 3:We then started making the call. Let us know we're not going to do OEM manufacturing anymore. We'll just do things in our own brand. We won't develop other people's brands, we'll develop our own.
Speaker 3:So that's really when the business changed for us, that we completely changed from being a factory which pretty much made stuff and my job was to get out there and sell darts and dartboards to people in different parts and different things, and we had some really good contracts. We had an American company in those early days who would order a million darts at a time Massive and that'd be months and months of work for us. But again it was relatively low margin and cheap because it was commodity pricing. So we actually needed to get into the brands and coupled with that was the introduction of China coming on stream.
Speaker 3:But the second China came on board and you know we had a lunch cut that you know they were doing a similar product, ok, nowhere near as good, but for those guys promotional business it was about price For you know, 25, 30 percent of what we could do it for that work just disappeared. So we had to really get into our own brand, control our own destiny and almost reposition ourselves to making the high-end, the niche products where we could be competitive and do it in New Zealand. You know, looked very seriously at those days as to whether we should, you know, move and set up in China. That was when Dad was still alive. He was one of the early people that went up to China and had a look about the idea of moving up there and we decided, no, we didn't want to do that, we wanted to stay in New Zealand.
Speaker 2:Glad you did. You touched on an order of a million diets To give us some. How big is this industry like? Who's throwing a million?
Speaker 3:it's. This industry is a lot bigger than people realise. Darts is a. It's a massive sport and it's not just the pub game that we think of. In New Zealand people don't quite understand that the second highest rating TV sport in the UK is darts. I mean, it's a bigger sport in TV ratings than tennis. People don't think about that. It's massive and it's massive right across the globe. Pockets in Asia, it's a massive sport. You know the US, it's a massive sport. You know the us, it's a big sport. Canada's massive, it's right across. And the european markets that the germans have jumped into darts in a massive way. They've got right behind it and okay, it still suits a little bit with the um the beer type culture there, but it it works in their market and they just love it. So it is a very big sport. But it's an interesting industry. It's still pretty much dominated by family-owned businesses and a lot of old, established English brands and, realistically, the English brands and us. So it's something quite different, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Now, if I'm right, you're number three in the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's where we believe we are. It's obviously a little bit hard to judge compared to where everybody else is, but pretty accurate, we believe we're number three.
Speaker 2:It's a very good place to be Family business number three in the world and you've also got the number one darts player currently under shot, correct?
Speaker 3:Well, he's not number one currently. We signed Michael Smith a few years back now. We signed him as the world number one when he won his world title. He's not quite there just at the moment, but he'll get back there and that was just a massive opportunity for us moment. But he'll get back there and that was just a massive opportunity for us.
Speaker 3:We've we've typically kept out of the the uk market and we'd been always led to believe that it was almost a little bit too hard. So we we focused it on, focused on europe, the us. Us is sort of bit like a domestic market to us. We've we do very well there. We're market leaders in the us, so that's a real key market to us. We do very well there. We're market leaders in the US, so that's a real key market for us. But when we signed Michael Smith, all of a sudden he's English, we now have the world champion, the world number one.
Speaker 3:We had to get into the UK market. So, as much as you sit down and love having long-term business plans and strategy, that document got ripped up and it was just a matter of OK, we have to attack the UK, we have to get in there. We've got something that's unique. We've got Michael Smith how do we do this? So we literally got one of our sales guys and packed his bag and said you disappear into the UK? And we set Joey on the road and said go and see what you can do, and it's been a massive success for us. The UK is our fastest growing market. It's already our second biggest market and it will get close to, if not past, the US soon Seems like you've turned every challenge into great opportunity soon.
Speaker 3:It seems like you've turned every challenge into great opportunity. Oh, there's always challenges, don't get me wrong, and you have tough times as well as good times. But you've got to see those opportunities. And you know the Michael Smith one. You know, when we signed him it was a coup itself. We signed him when he was number five. But but the way sporting good contracts go, you have pre-contracts with people waiting for their contract to end with somebody else. So during that time he'd won his world title. So we inherited him as the world number one and the world champion. So yeah, it just we. I don't even want to think about how many hours we ran machines, but it was as long as we could. We ran machines, but it was as long as we could. We were running machines and making product as quick as we can and it was disappearing out the door.
Speaker 2:So how many darts could you manufacture in a day?
Speaker 3:Look, I won't share that, obviously for commercial reasons, but a truckload, truckload. Yeah, we are one of New Zealand's largest machine shops with our CNC's and we just do our own work. I mean, typically most of your big CNC places in New Zealand will do work for lots of other people. We just do our own.
Speaker 2:Stick to what you're good at, eh, yep. Now, taking a step back, you joined in the late 1990s. How did you go from caddy caddy to distributing a product in over 75 countries? Because back then things were very different to what they are today. So could you walk us through? How did you do that from caddy caddy to the global stage?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was really interesting in those early days when Dad dragged me back from the UK to join the business. I was 96, and it was very different. You know, travel was different. The way things happened was different. I mean you're still seeing the facts. I mean I was still there in the telex age. But you know, facts was still there in the Talix age.
Speaker 3:Fax was your main means of communication. It was considered brilliant. When I started in the business we had one computer. I mean it's just so different and you had to do it by time and market and lots of times in aeroplanes. I would travel for six weeks at a time and I would do at least three, if not four, of those trips a year.
Speaker 3:So a massive impact on family life, that sort of thing. Dad was the same. Dad and I would travel together and we'd get to a market. Dad and I would travel together and would get to a market and he would turn left and I would turn right and you'd see that each see a group of customers would fly out of the US, would fly into Europe, do the same thing again, and you just worked your way around.
Speaker 3:I tended to do Asia, so you just spent a massive amount of time in airplanes. I mean again, phone calls were so expensive. Then I would call my wife once a week. You know she'd get a fax once a week and that was pretty much just that. Hey, I'm still alive and I'm still there. But it had a massive impact positively on the business, but a massive downside on family stuff. I mean I'd come home from a six-week trip. I had two young kids. The kids wouldn't know me. It would take a week for me to get integrated back into the household and the kids get used to the fact that I was around again and that I existed. And then three weeks later I'd jump on a plane again. It's just crazy. I've got a cousin who's a pilot for Cafe Pacific and it was a year that I did more flights than he did.
Speaker 2:So you know, put it in context, it's a massive sacrifice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, but you know how did we do that.
Speaker 3:You know just hard work, you know good product development persistence.
Speaker 3:A famous story I tell and it is true, it's not a story is that the South African market's been a very good market for us for a number of years and in fact for over 15 years was our biggest market, and that resulted in the fact that I called on it. There was an account I wanted there and I knew they were the people we had to have. So I called on him for six or seven years, two, sometimes three times a year before they gave me an order, and every time, you know, he'd look at me and say Peter, why are you back? And I'd say because eventually you're going to say, yes, you're going to give me a chance. And after a while he goes OK, fair enough, I've got a little opportunity, I'll give you a crack at this.
Speaker 3:Within a year we had all their business and they say for the next 15 years, that was our biggest account. But you did your research, you worked out who you wanted and you just had to be completely persistent and make it happen, and you just had to knuckle in and do it. So that's what you did.
Speaker 2:You've certainly done it with over 70 countries. How long have you had that sort of distribution? Has it been over the last 10 years? You've doubled distribution or has it always been around those numbers?
Speaker 3:It's changed a lot because in the early days you had regional distributors, so like we had one customer in the US and they would do the US. We'd have a customer in Canada and, ok, you had the odd pockets of, like our guys in South Africa, for example, they did, I think, all of Africa for us. So you had pockets that did regions, but you typically had a distributor into each market. We had two distributors in Europe and so you had like we didn't have no more than 40 accounts and they were all of a size. The difference is today that that role of a distributor is gone. You just can't justify that. The world's got too small. So we've got 240 customers just in the US now. So it varies and now you've just got lots more of smaller accounts that you deal directly with, which is great because you're actually now talking with the direct store owner and it allows you to have a better relationship with them.
Speaker 3:You're actually so close to the end player that you actually get to know the end player really well and that's, you know, probably one of the things slightly going off tangent that we do really well is we really spend a deep amount of time understanding the dart player and what they need and spend time. Spend time going to dart tournaments talking to players. I mean, I still take the best part of a week a year and I go to the New Zealand National Champs and I spend the whole week at the dart tournament. You know, should I really do that in my role? Not really, but that's one of my funnest weeks of the year. I love going there, I enjoy it and that's why I do it. But you also spend the whole week talking to grassroots dart players. You hear what's troubling them, you hear what's working, you hear what's not working. So that's absolutely brilliant to feed into our NPD, to just to feed into our whole culture, to make sure that what we are doing is right for the actual user of the product and the retailer and that's something that we're already clear on that.
Speaker 3:A lot of people will focus on their business, about their end user. But you also need to have your channel right and that we keep the retailer happy, make sure that they're making a fair margin as well. It's got to be a win-win. You make sure that they're looked after, you do the right things by them, you're keeping them happy, you're keeping the end player happy. It works. So we openly acknowledge that we have two customers and we work to that and we we. It's vitally important that both customers of ours are happy with the product, because if it's great for the players, but the store doesn't like it because maybe it's too big and bulky or they're not making enough money out of it, they're not going to arrange it, so you have to keep both happy.
Speaker 2:And it must be incredible for them as well, knowing you from little old New Zealand. You've travelled all the way and then they can see you and they know who you are. I mean, you've been doing this for long enough. Now they must recognise you when you go to these comps or go to the store in America. They're like, oh, is that still happening?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it still happens. You know, if you mean like me personally, for example, I'm not well known in New Zealand and I'm outside of the Dart fraternity, but if I walk into a dart hall anywhere else in the world, they know who I am and they know that they'll say well, why is Peter here? You know what's he looking at, which players is he looking at? Has he come to sign some players? You know, or you know. Often I'm just there because I'm in town and there happens to be a tournament on, so I'll go. Last time I was in Dallas, texas, I went to a little country tournament that was played at six boards up in a little bar in downtown Dallas and I went down there for the night just to watch darts. It's great.
Speaker 2:What a great way to build that trust and credibility, because obviously they know you, New Zealand. They're going to come with a New Zealand story and they'll be like he's made it all the way here. That means something to us, so that's super special. Now, just to share a bit of insight, let's say is there a strategy or a framework you use that we can share? I'm in New Zealand, or maybe I'm in Australia and I need to grow. I want to go to the US, I want to go to Asia. Who do you rely on? What are the stepping stones that we need to be aware of, or what are the secret trap doors we can jump through to speed up the successful transition of launching somewhere else?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a really interesting one, especially for New Zealand businesses. And you've really got to remember that you are Kiwis and do things the Kiwi way. You know just because you're coming to America. Yes, you've got to understand their culture, but still don't forget who you are and where you come from. Be proudly New Zealand and they like that and they understand that and you know. Okay, sometimes you do the odd thing that might not be quite right, but they forgive you because you're a New Zealander and you can get away with a lot, so that New Zealand voice, new Zealand accent is massive. You've got to be prepared to actually get there. It's meaning you can do some stuff by phone zoom, whatever but you actually have to get there.
Speaker 3:So, like, like in the US, when we changed from having a single distributor to doing it ourselves, we sent two of our sales reps up there and said, okay, just travel around the US and knock on doors. And they went and saw an account in I don't know where was it in, just out of Chicago, and I knocked on the store and went into this dart shop. This guy hadn't been in business for 20 years. That was the first time he'd seen a dart rep, first time a rep had physically called in the store and that was us all the way from New Zealand. He couldn't believe that someone from New Zealand would call in on a store and that store is now pretty much exclusively all of our gear now and he's one of our biggest advocates. But because we actually took the effort to turn up at his door and we actually still go back. Every three, four months we go back and we still knock on the door.
Speaker 3:Yes, technology is great, but you've just got to get in there boots and all get boots on the ground in the market and get in there. But also you've got to listen to the people and work out what works for them Design for the markets and with us, because we sell into multiple markets, that can be quite tricky. So when we're looking at a new product development, we've obviously got to try and design it. So it's pretty good for the world because that's where we sell. But typically ranges will be focused on an area because we understand that, okay, this range is more than likely to sell really well in the US or into the UK or maybe for a European range, that will be the main focus of that range and you just got to design for that, because everyone's needs are different and you just have to recognise that it's not a one-size-fits-all market anymore. You have to do that and really tailor it, but that's vital.
Speaker 3:The other one that New Zealand companies have really got to get really good at is telling stories, the whole storytelling philosophy, and I picked this up through the New Zealand Story which was an NZTE program which is brilliant. I don't know if it's still done, but it was very good in the day and it was about telling the New Zealand Story. And we started by telling the story of a warrior barrel we designed which was a pretty cool dart in its own right, but we arm sleeve tattooed it. But we had that tattoo carved particularly such that it was our carving but it also told our story. So we engraved that carving down the dart barrel which made the barrel itself completely unique.
Speaker 3:But it was so easy to tell that story. You can show it to people, they can look at it and I don't know if people won't realize, but the Pacific arm sleeve tattoo is one of the most famous tattoos globally. You look at every NRL league game you watch. Even if you watch some of the NFL basketball, a lot of them have Pacific arms sleeve tattoos, massively popular, so people could automatically understand it and they could see that story down the barrel. So it became easy to tell a story. But you've got to be truly authentic with it, and that's part of it too. You can't just walk in there thinking you've got a story. You've got to live truly authentic with it and and that's part of it too you can't just walk in there thinking you've got a story. You put it, live, breathe it and and completely be engrossed in it yourself. It it has to be authentic.
Speaker 2:If you're not authentic, it's you're just wasting your time have you got an example of how you guys have used the story to create something?
Speaker 3:look, you mean we use it in almost all of our dart barrel ranges. Every range has a reason to be and every range has a story with it. So one of our most famous ranges is the Viking range, and you mean the barrel grips on that is based on the Viking armour. So all of that we cut into the barrel so the grip purely reflects that. The colors that go into the barrel tie in, like there's a barrel based on a ship, so the color's based on a wave. The one of our other lines.
Speaker 3:We needed to get the color right to get it exactly right. For us it was the berserker range and we wanted to get the color of viking armor. Okay, viking armor is leather and blood. So to get that we literally mixed leather and blood. We went down to the butcher, got a bucket of blood, went and got some leather and soaked it in it, then laid it in the sun for a week and that's what we color matched it to, so that all fit together. And that is just an amazing story. When you tell that to people, this is the level you go to to get that little stuff right, and when you get that level of detail right, you win people over. You know. You start telling the story about how the barrel came from, what it's's, why does it exist? And the second they understand all of that. They've already ordered it. They haven't even asked you what the price is.
Speaker 2:And it stops your competitor at the door because they can't compete on elements like that because it's an authentic story, yep.
Speaker 3:And yet people have tried to copy us and they bring out packaging that looks like ours and they bring out barrels that look like ours. And you look on social media and the dart players just call them out oh, that's a copy of a shot barrel. And because we, we own that space and we're known for it and we just we have to just keep doing it, to keep getting better and better, and but that's really important for us and we put massive energy and effort into it. I mean, our design team it's a pretty big team nowadays is purely focused on making sure every story is right. Look, we get the odd one not right.
Speaker 3:Don't get me wrong, we're not perfect. But you learn from those too, and that's a good thing. You can say, ok, well, that one didn't quite resonate where we wanted. We've got products right to the end of the line and at the last minute we pull them because the story wasn't quite right. So don't release it, stop, because you can't risk losing your own belief and going out there with something you're not happy with. If it's not right, just don't do it, just stop it and being so authentic.
Speaker 2:Like I say, at the moment, you own the authentic space. No one can really touch you. So you've obviously leveraged the New Zealand story. Being from the Kiwi, you then leveraged storytelling in the DART design process. You mentioned that you utilised NZTE.
Speaker 3:How important or how were you able to utilise NZTE when growing to the 75 different Look, nzte has been an absolute fantastic partner of ours and I can't say that strong enough that they are an absolute asset that New Zealand businesses should utilize. There are some most amazing programs that you get out of it and there's a lot of help there that people don't realize is available. You know, not only from the offices around the world like I've used the offices around the world as meeting rooms, the offices around the world like I've used the offices around the world as meeting rooms. Sometimes you need help with translation, with languages. You know that's available. There is experts available that can help you out for all sorts of different bits and pieces. You know, if you've got a legal question in a market, you can connect and they'll connect you with somebody that can answer that question for you in the market, you can connect and they'll connect you with somebody that can answer that question for you. It's a phenomenal asset that New Zealanders have and you just got to work out how's best to utilize it for your business. We they're a massive strategic partner of ours and we work very closely with them, and so I have Zooms with theoms every month with the US business development manager, the same in the UK, as well as at least a month with New Zealand client manager and they know exactly where we're heading, they know what we're working on and they back full support around that.
Speaker 3:In the early days when we started getting onto Amazon, we didn't know what we were doing on Amazon. I mean, how we got on Amazon was we were told we couldn't get on Amazon from New Zealand and Pete, our sales manager, jumped on a plane and knocked on their door physically and went to reception and eventually managed to talk them into giving him someone to talk to there, and that's how we got on Amazon. But once we got on there, it was okay. Well, how does this work? We didn't understand how algorithms work and how do you make this work.
Speaker 3:Nzte linked us with some people that could help us with that and, as a result, that's one of our largest accounts. So you've just got to be prepared to ask the questions. The particular programs they have the one I think is one of the best things they do is the beachhead advisors. These are typically very experienced New Zealanders that have lived offshore, become experts in a field and are doing a give back, and you can connect and have a couple of hours of talking with these absolute experts in fields and mind-blowingly good Sheer luck. As we'd have it, I had an opportunity to meet one about six months ago who was an expert in tariffs.
Speaker 2:Very handy.
Speaker 3:So I had a session with her and she had said hey, odds on, something's going to happen around tariffs. You need to tidy all your stuff up so you can understand how to trade in a tariff environment such that, when at least tariffs hit, all our systems are already done. Yes, there's been some new learnings and chaoses with it, but we were 90% down the road of already having all of our data right, our documentation right. So we've had nowhere near the problems other people have had, because we'd already pre-empted it, because a bet sheet advisor had said hey, this is something you guys should be doing, this is odds-on going to happen, so let's get your ducks in a row first. So we were pretty prepared for it, and that was from an hour-and-a-half meeting with an expert in tarama. It's an incredible resource and look highly encourage New Zealand businesses to. If you're starting at exporting, go and talk to NZTE, and it's not just about going there because you want some money. Yes, there is funding available for certain programs and this and that, and that's great and wonderful, but that's not the big asset they have. It's the connections that you get and the people they can link you to. That will save you just disappearing down a rabbit hole when we set up in the US and put our own office into Dallas Texas.
Speaker 3:The advice they gave us around lawyers, accountants connected us with other New Zealand businesses that had done a similar thing, such that they can tell you OK, here's the accountant that we first used. They weren't very good. This is the one we're using at the moment. These guys are great. Have a chat with them. That saved me months of interviewing different accountants trying to pick which accountant. We would go to Same with lawyers. I mean, there's so many lawyers in America. You type Google on lawyers. You get pages and pages. How do you pick one? Get one other people have used and other New Zealanders can recommend you sort of go. Okay, well, that's one easy decision I can make.
Speaker 2:So they've got the trusted network so you can basically rely on to advise you, to give you the right information you need, Because obviously are they in all the countries that you need them in. I mean, how global does NZTE yeah?
Speaker 3:they are in most countries. But if not, even if they might not have an office in that particular country, they will have somebody on their team that has traded there, or they will know of another Kiwi business that is trading there or they'll know of another Kiwi business that is trading there and they link you up and you make a phone call and that's the great thing about Kiwi businesses we actually are happy to support each other.
Speaker 3:I had a conversation a while back with some businesses in America and they couldn't believe that New Zealand, I, would share my knowledge of how to enter the US market with other businesses. I said, well, why wouldn't I? I said there's no threat of us helping other New Zealand businesses that aren't in the dart industry. They're not going to jump into darts and start competing with us. They've got their own products. Happy to help In America. They don't do that. That's your IP, ip and you guard that. I think it's a real strength in New Zealand businesses that we actually openly help each other and I very regularly make a telephone call to other businesses and say, hey, I'm stuck on this, can you help? And I get people that do the same who call me to say, hey, we're looking at going to the UK or we're looking at going into the US, can you help? Absolutely, it's a great resource and NZTE help you make those connections and that's one of the biggest features they have.
Speaker 2:So everyone's leveraging off everyone else's experience to help advance you further, quicker, which is, I suppose, if you need someone to lean on who's done it before, because, especially in today's environment, you've got to move fast. You don't have the time that you used to, because someone's going to fill the gap. The competition's on your tail. So launching successfully takes a group of people rather than an individual.
Speaker 3:Yeah, time is so precious. Now and again I'll go back to when I started in the business. You Precious. Now and again I go back to when I started in the business. You mean if someone you know people still send you the odd letter. But even if someone sent you a fax, they didn't expect an answer. I mean if you answered the next day, you were considered to be pretty prompt. You mean now, if you don't answer, sometimes people within 15, 20 minutes they're wondering what's wrong with you. But you know it's crazy, crazy and time zones and half the time it's the middle of the night here.
Speaker 2:Huge change from then till now. Speaking of change, if I look, if I think of a darts player, I'm thinking of a chubby white male on the piss in a bar throwing darts. Has that changed?
Speaker 3:is it?
Speaker 2:still where we are today.
Speaker 3:No, it massively changed. I mean, don't get me wrong, for the average person that plays darts absolutely likes to have a beer while they do it. You know this is your home recreation, guys. I liken it to as darts is something you do while you're having a beer with your mates, and that's a lot of where darts as something you do while you're having a beer with your mates and that's a lot of where darts come from and what I also call a cul-de-sac darts league People playing with their friends on a Thursday night A guy's time to hang out and chat and enjoy some company.
Speaker 3:But the actual top dart players now this game's too serious there's, there's too much money involved to, you know, afford to be out the back sloshing. That doesn't happen anymore. Yeah, the odd player might have a beer a day or a glass of wine a day, but that's it. Now these top guys, it's, it's too important to them. I mean there's cameras on them wherever they go, whatever they do.
Speaker 3:It's completely different. It's a fully professional sport and you know these guys train six, seven hours a day. They go to the gym. You know a lot of the guys you see on TV now. Yeah, they're still the odd big belly, but most aren't. Most are pretty fit. The dart player does a lot of steps in a day, so they've got to keep fit. And when you look at the, the big change in the industry, which is a youth, there's a massive amount of, you know, I say 16 to 25 year olds playing playing the game a lot now. So they don't play in a bar, they play at home or they'll play in some academy or they'll play in the local hall. It's not just the bar anymore. So the sport's changed.
Speaker 2:What do you think drives the new generation?
Speaker 3:Well, there's obviously Luke Littler, 17-year-old world champion, drives massive change for the youth. But I also put it down to I think there is a change away from electronics. There's been a lot of people in the electronics age that are all about you know, it's PlayStation, it's games on your phone, it's Minecraft or whatever the latest thing kids are into now. But I think there's a push to go away from that, to go back to some of the sports, and so darts has been one of those ones that has just taken off as a result that the young kids realize that this is actually a good sport. They can make a career out of it, they can make money. I mean, luke Littler is making millions of pounds at 17 playing darts. Well, why wouldn't you want to do that? So there's a massive amount of kids taking up the game. That's brilliant. Oh, it's good Keeping us at our toes.
Speaker 3:We're having design for younger markets and that's quite unique. That's something now typical. If you looked at our demographic. In the past it was a 45-year-old male. That's not what it is now, and there is a massive amount of ladies playing the game. I would say 25% to 30% of the market could be female now. So it's a massive swing and again, maybe 30% of the market is under 25. So you've got not only ladies starting to play, you've got youth. So colors are changing, designs are changing, your packaging is changing. So it's a really fun time to be in the industry. It's changing and it's changing in a really positive, good way. So for people like me that have been at it a long time, it's actually nice to get this change and it's sort of reinvigorated my desires and passions as well. So that's great. What a great place to be Now?
Speaker 2:as you mentioned, there's a huge new generation coming through. You've turned some challenges into great opportunities. You're a global brand. You've been around for a while. So how did COVID impact all that? Because when you've got so much out there and something like COVID hits you, that's got to be painful. Or did it happen the other way for you guys?
Speaker 3:that's got to be painful, or did it happen the other way for you guys? Well, you mean, yeah, initially obviously immense pain when you know you can't work and you know you've got customers calling me, screaming at me, saying ship us goods, I'd love to. I can't get into my plant. Why can't you get into your plant? We're not allowed to leave home. You know massive issues that know other countries yes, they had various levels of lockdowns, but not like to the extent that we did, and you know that was some massive issues there. But you know you just couldn't supply. So you know there was a massive amount of stress as a business owner and not so good on your cash when you've still got staff and staff to pay and such like. And, yes, there was grants available, but they didn't cover the costs and everything else you've got to pay. You've still got a landlord that, yes, may give you a rent holiday for a while, but he's still got to get paid as well. So lots of hassles. Well, so, lots of hassles. But what happened for us is that, again, home-based sports went absolutely nuts. So darts, pool table, tennis, games like chess just went ballistic. So when we were allowed back to work, we were that busy, we didn't know which way it was up, and to a certain degree, the industry hasn't slowed down from that, it just created a massive amount of new players. But it's also I put it down to that's one of the reasons why the industry changed to a lot more home-based, and that's what I said before the cul-de-sac darklies.
Speaker 3:So what was happening in markets that you know? Yes, people were, in theory, locked down, but what they did was one person would set up a dartboard in their garage and on a Tuesday or Thursday night, all the blokes would go around there, even though they weren't supposed to, and catch up, play darts, have a beer or two, and then they'd go home. Well, these were guys that beforehand were doing that at the local pub. Well, you know what? Their wives were a lot happier with them. They were only just down the road, they were not spending as much money because they were not buying beer at bar prices and they walked home. So no drink driving issues or any of that sort of stuff. So all these leagues actually stayed.
Speaker 3:So those people are still playing darts in these garages on a Tuesday night, thursday night, and there's a huge, you know, cul-de-sac or garage dart league across the world. Now it's resulted from COVID and it's become a big part of the industry and it's typically a group of you know it started off with the blokes but often now the wives are playing and they'll go down and play darts on a tuesday and thursday night. You know three houses down and then two nights later it'll be housed. You know house at the other end of the street and there's all of these little dart fraternities set up across the world. It's been amazing. So a positive outcome from COVID for our industry.
Speaker 2:And what a way to build up the next generation, to lead it forward. I mean for them to start then obviously their kids are going to watch the parents play and it should just feed on for a growing demand. Yeah, darts is a family sport.
Speaker 3:Most kids grow up in a dart house. They end up playing darts. That's just pure and simple and that's a good thing. It's a good family game I used to play every night with my son. After school we would play darts and that was a great way for him and I to catch up and we just went down to the garage and just played darts. It was great, great for his maths and you know it was a good time with. You know, kids typically you know, for those of us that are parents understand that, especially boys they don't tell you a lot. You just get a few grunts here and there. But you know, ryan and I would play darts and have a chat and I don't think Ryan even knew that he was talking to me, because we weren't talking, we were playing darts. So it was a good time Good time.
Speaker 2:Now, if we look at all the moving pieces you've mentioned, you've got NZTE, the support network. You've got the sales team on the road. You've got yourself travelling, your sales manager running the different teams. How does someone utilise marketing when you've got to communicate to so many different customers in so many different regions? How do you utilise it to hopefully not just build new potential in business but to retain it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, look, that aspect nowadays is just so important into a business that you know and it's that sales and marketing one-two punch. I think that's the important thing to recognise now. You can't have one without the other and whilst they are very different skills and segments, they actually relate so well together. But the modern marketing is so different. When I started you want to do some marketing. You stick an ad in a newspaper or you buy a page in one of the Dart magazines. You know we've got multiple staff now just doing social media. You know we've got a full time person just doing filming in house. You know've got a full-time person just doing filming in-house. You know that sort of stuff has become just so vital.
Speaker 3:You've got to have content going out every day and across multiple different channels, and half of them I don't even understand what they are to be completely honest, but it it's just amazing and the reach for that and the whole role now of how you get products to people and how you get endorsements. In the old days you used to go to a player and get them to endorse a product. Now an influencer is just as valuable and these people often don't have any understanding of darts, but they're an influencer and you show them a dart and they really like it and all of a sudden you sell 1,000 of them. So it's completely changed. So you have to have this content and you have to have it across multiple markets and it's a real challenge for the marketing team to get content that's relevant into multiple markets almost daily. Yeah, I, my hat's off to those guys. It's it's a real challenge, but it's massive and it's what you have to do now. You you can't sort of sit on your silo and just making a good product isn't good enough anymore. You've got to be able to get that message across there. You've got to get drive people to drive that demand.
Speaker 3:You want people going to the store saying, hey, where is that latest viking dart? You haven't got it on the shelf. I saw it online. I really like that and typically sorry, oh yeah, I hadn't actually ordered that one yet. I should do an order. I'll order some in. That drives the demand, but you've got to get that happening and that's. It's a challenge, but it's vital, like a simple thing we do is when every dart is made, we film it being machined and it's a bit like that how is it made? And that's been massively successful for us, and all it is is just showing people how it is actually made and people will look at that. They'll buy it out. Then they'll want to watch the video of how it's made so they can understand what's involved in it. And when you think about it, it's really cool. When we started doing it it was just like a bit of a gimmick. So we'll just film this and see how this goes and it's one of our biggest marketing tools now.
Speaker 2:That's brilliant. I suppose people love buying something they can see the conception of from beginning to end, understanding the design and story. So it all folds together.
Speaker 3:And they understand the value too. I think it helps people understand and they look at it and go, oh, that does take three minutes to machine. It is a process, and they okay, well, I can understand why it has a cost Brilliant, it is a process and they're like okay, well, I can understand why it has a cost Brilliant.
Speaker 2:So what's next for Shot? What's next for you? Because obviously you're second generation. You're going to be bringing in the third generation to take over the business.
Speaker 3:Look, I would like to say that one of my kids or one of my sister's kids would be involved in the business, but at this stage they don't have a desire to be involved. I still live in hope. We've made a decision. Well, we my sister and I made a decision probably five or six years ago that we had to young the management team down and we went out and employed a bunch of fresh graduates and we brought them up through the business and we've held almost all of them Okay, you know, some of that's been a bit of challenge. We've had to work around overseas trips and OE experiences, et cetera. One of our guys has lived in Portugal for the last year and we've made that work. But we needed to get A some younger brains into the business and some younger ways of doing things, which is an absolute gone seed now, given the way the market's gone, but also the fact that that is putting massive passion back through the business, which is great because it keeps older fellows like me A open and involved, and these guys want to take over running the business. So we've really embraced that. Connor is now the general manager and the plan is very much for him to take over the business. If mine or Julie's kids want to get involved in the business, they serve an apprenticeship under Connor and work their way through, and that's just the way it is.
Speaker 3:But look, I don't blame my kids for not wanting to get involved in the business. You mean, I said right at the start about the amount of time that I was away and my kids remember that and they know that I was never there for birthdays, school trips or whatever. They remember that and they know that they don't want to have to do that for their kids. So I can get that because there's a lot of stuff I missed out and I sacrificed to get the business where it is. And I really I don't know if I'm right wording this that whilst it's been great for the business, there's a lot of stuff. Regrets I have about missing stuff that I shouldn't have missed, but I was at a trade show, so I get it from the kids' point of view. But we've got good young people in the business that are actively involved.
Speaker 3:So I don't do a typical, a massive amount of work day to day. I don't have particular tasks. I purely come into work each day just to lead and just to help develop the people around me and that's great and that gives me the stuff that I really enjoy. I don't need to quote orders or such anymore. I've done it for so long that I don't need to do that. These guys can do that. I don't run a lot orders or such like anymore. I've done it for so long that I don't need to do that. These guys can do that. I don't run a lot of the sales relationships anymore. These other guys can do it. I don't do a lot of the travel, but again, they want to travel. I don't particularly want to travel anymore, so I've done my times of that.
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't know how many times you want to kiss the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Don't need to do it again. If they want to go, do that, go and do it.
Speaker 2:You do the trips Now, peter, also just to help get some really good insight. You don't work Fridays.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I don't go into the office on Fridays and my Fridays have become a little bit of a ritual and it's quite different and, I think, quite unique, but it's a really important part of our culture. So, because we've got staff based in different parts of the world at the moment, as I said earlier, we've got a guy that lives in Portugal, we've got a few in the UK, obviously got staff in America. So my Fridays I get up, I live at Waii Beach, so I walk down the beach and I start making phone calls. I walk down the beach and I start making phone calls and I make a phone call to as many as I can, based on time zones, of our international staff and I have a conversation with them and it's typically not work, it's pure about culture and it's easy to forget when people are offshore. You don't have that daily conversation of how's your wife, how's your kids. You know my cat got run over or whatever. You miss all of that. So I do all that on a Friday and there's some most amazing conversations I have with people and and finding out okay, well, you know, sorry, my, I lost my house. I've got to find a new flat. Okay, how you doing? What day do you need off? How do we make this work? And it's become quite a major thing and like to the extent that if I miss calling somebody, I'll typically have an email and they might come through at their time in the night saying I didn't get a call from you today, are you okay? And you know I'll go back and say look sorry, I just got caught up, I you know, with all the other calls. I knew it was after 11 o'clock. I'll catch up with you next week.
Speaker 3:But it's become such an important thing and the staff absolutely love it and the fact that I do it walking down the beach If it's a beautiful day, I put the camera on and point them the waves and we watch the surfers. It's just outstanding and it's something quite different and it's something we've developed into our culture. I think that's really allowed us to build the international teams, because that's a real struggle, that when you've got a New Zealand-based culture and you try to put that into America and you try to put that into the UK, it's quite different. But because I have those phone calls and I do it in a very Kiwi way, I do it walking down the beach, you know, barefooted, with a cup of coffee in one hand and dog lead in the other and a phone jammed in my ear.
Speaker 3:It's become quite an event and I say that the staff absolutely love it and they are well ready for my phone calls. You know they never miss it. The phone doesn't go unanswered. Their phone is with them while they're at home that night and I'm sure they've warned their partners or wives that hey, you know odds on, peter's going to call me at some time between, you know, seven and eight. You know Peter's going to call me at some time between 7 and 8, and I'll take that call, and it's an important time of their week.
Speaker 2:But it's such a great and authentic way to stay connected with them. I mean, they're looking forward to it, they're expecting it, they know you're on the other side of the world and for you to make that effort. So you are working Friday. You're just working a different way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just work in a different way and it's you know it is. That's what the interesting thing is. It's not a business phone call. We don't talk about how many orders were done this week or what week's sales were. It's not about that. If they want to bring up that hey, we had a little problem this week or what am I doing with this, absolutely I'll deal with that. But it's not about me calling them to find out on work. It's me to check in on a personal level how are you? And I think that says a lot for how we are as a business and how our culture. Is that? That's important? And there's a reason why those people that we get offshore even though it's tough offshore to be based for an international business but we tend to keep people and I'm sure that's one of the reasons because they actually do feel connected back to NZ and they start to understand a little bit about the New Zealand culture. So that's pretty important.
Speaker 2:That's very special. Well done for that one. Now, just to end off, you've obviously turned a lot of challenges into opportunities and I remember catching up with you maybe 6-12 months ago, and the market was hurting, and you said to me lee, when times get tough, everybody in the business turns into sales people. We're riding a wave, there's always a wave and we always get through it. So, to the listeners out there that are hurting or are looking at expanding, what are one or two key takeaways that you could share to give them something to do, or maybe something to avoid, to help springboard their success?
Speaker 3:Yeah, look, when times are tough, it's really easy to dig yourself a bit of a hole and bury yourself, but it's the worst thing you can do. You've just got to get out there and hustle and it's old-fashioned hustle and make the phone calls, do this and that. You've just got to get out there and do it and look. Often people don't like saying, hey, we're a bit quiet, need some work. Sometimes you've got to and that You've just got to get out there and do it and look. Often people don't like saying, hey, we're a bit quiet, need some work. Sometimes you've got to say that that hey, guys, I need an order, and I have done that in the past.
Speaker 3:I've rung international distributors saying hey guys, we're a bit light at the moment. I need some work in what have you got. And often they'll say they'll surprise you. Oh yeah, I should do any of this stuff. I hadn't really thought about it. I'll drop you an order, but you've actually got to ask.
Speaker 3:And it's one thing typically New Zealanders are bad at as well, that we're often also too nice and we don't want to ask for an order. And sometimes you just actually have to do that and call people and say actually, hey, I need an order, and you'll be surprised and other people go actually, yeah, okay, I can do that. Yeah, okay, my stock's okay, but if you're a bit bit light, I can take a bit extra stock. At the moment I've got a couple of things coming next month. I can do that and you'll. You'll get work out of it and but you just got to be a make those phone calls sometimes. You just got to be open and honest and I find that works really well. And again, it's a bit of a Kiwi way of just saying this is where I'm at. Can you help? Often they will. We don't like asking for help, but if you do, odds on, they'll say, yes, you've just got to do it.
Speaker 2:So it's being that authentic self again.
Speaker 3:Yep, and be proudly who you are and be proudly of our culture, and that's important. But I sort of hit on that. But everyone is a salesperson and everyone is. Any one of your team that's working there is in sales. They just might not realise it Because when they go home and they tell people about how much they love the business or how happy they are at work, that rubs off onto people and that leads to you never know the connections.
Speaker 3:And the world is so small now there's two or three degrees of separation, away at most, away at most. So you know you'll be surprised that one of your staff members will have a friend that's a buyer at somewhere, or an auntie that works somewhere, and if they're saying how wonderful you are as an employer and this is a great place and this, and that that definitely comes back the other side, you've just you know everyone is in sales. They might not realise they're doing it, but even if they're out on the, you know everyone is in sales. They just they might not realize and they're doing it, but even if they're out on the you know the soccer pitch watching their kids on a Saturday morning, you know, wearing a company t-shirt, they're out selling for you.
Speaker 2:Building some brand, building some relationships, connections Brilliant Well look. Thank you so much for sharing. I hope the listeners and the viewers got to take something away. We look forward to seeing the next step for shot diets and, for those of you that haven't seen it, jump on to shot diets and have a look. But thank you again, peter international markets.
Speaker 3:Look, reach out NZTE or even reach out to other exporters. Look, I'm happy to take phone calls if people need a hand with markets. It's what it's about.
Speaker 1:That's how we grow New Zealand Brilliant. Thanks so much, Peter. That's that. Thanks for listening to. We Do B2B by Blue Ocean. Now brace for CTAs. If you want to join and grow the community, make sure to subscribe. Wherever your eyes and ears absorb information, Don't forget to switch on notifications so you know when the latest episodes drop. And for more B2B goodness, be sure to follow Blue Ocean, the B2B agency, on LinkedIn. Now look, you know how this next piece works. The more reviews we get, the faster this thing grows. So please do for us what you hope your customers would do for you Leave a review and share your thoughts. Let's stay connected and keep the B2B marketing conversation going.