Effuzi International
This page profiles Effuzi International, a Porirua based seating business that's gone global.
Murray Trewick, Managing Director of Effuzi International sitting on one of the quality theatre seating produced by his company.
Murray Treweek likes to say that his business is situated in Porirua, the world. "You can be based anywhere and do business with the world if you do it right." He views New Zealand as one town and the rest of the world as his market. "We have international toll free numbers to make it easy to do business with us – when people ring they think we're local, they don’t know we are based in New Zealand."
Despite the fact that Effuzi International now operates in a global environment it had somewhat more humble beginnings.
Small beginnings
After losing his job as Production Manager in the car seat industry, when the company closed down, Murray decided to set up his own business with the help of one other person. "We took the technology from the car seat industry with the aim of applying it to the commercial seating arena."
"When you start out you are never quite sure how it's going to go. For the first few months, although we spent a lot of hours in the design process, we made everything but a chair - whatever people wanted really."
Big break
Then Effuzi got their first seating contract manufacturing and installing a lecture theatre for the New Zealand Army in Trentham. Two months later came Effuzi’s first international contract. "That was for the University Of Sydney’s Foot bridge Theatre - an auditorium with 700 seats. That was the contract that really put us on the map."
Effuzi International is now supplying top of the range seating throughout New Zealand and internationally, particularly in Australia. The seating can be found everywhere from our own Whitireia Polytechnic lecture theatre, Hoyts cinemas throughout the country, New South Wales' Casula Powerhouse, Sydney’s Capitol Theatre, Melbourne's Regent Theatre and the Empire Theatre in Queensland. Murray says generally the company does about 60 per cent of its business off shore and is looking to increase that in the future.
This is all good news for Porirua with Effuzi employing between 10 and 25 staff depending on the contracts on the go. "Over the years we have had staff from throughout the Wellington region but over the past 10 years 90 per cent of our staff are now from this area."
Drawing on the local workforce
Murray says the local market provides a dependable workforce for his company. "People like working close to home and see that as an incentive – when people are happy in their work and it’s close to home they tend to be more settled." Some of his staff have even relocated from Wellington to be closer to work and to enjoy the local lifestyle.
As a keen yachtie himself, and with his sons involved in sailing as well, Murray appreciates the draw of the lifestyle and sees it as a great bonus for living and working in Porirua.
"It's a great place – we have four yacht clubs within half a mile of each other, and the Marlborough Sounds just a couple of hours sailing away, you just can’t beat that."
Link to more information