Page 11 - HW April 2022

hard news
Territory Manager
for Auckland,
Waikato and
top of the South
Island. Born in
Bulgaria, Vaska
arrived in New
Zealand in 2011
and worked for
Mitre 10 MEGA Botany for almost 8 years working her way up to manage
the garden department as well as a duty manager responsible for the whole store.
Kelly Wang
started with Yates in January as Brand Manager within the marketing team, looking after
the Lawn &
Plant Protection portfolio and project managing NPDs
launching in NZ. Prior to joining Yates, Kelly has spent the last 10 years in FMCG, latterly as Product Manager at Nespresso NZ.
Leon Warner
is Masport’s
new Marketing
Services Manager.
Leon joined the
iconic Kiwi firm in
January from his
role with Paper
Plus as Digital
Marketing & Brand Manager. Prior to this, Leon was Marketing Manager for Honda Power & Marine for four years.
Metabo joins HiKOKI at Accent Tools
ACCENT TOOLS HAS added Metabo power tools to its distribution portfolio, having taken over custodianship of the premium German brand from Tooline Ltd.
Metabo has a strong connection with Accent’s existing Japanese HiKOKI power tool brand, also being an independent member of the global Koki Holdings Group.
And Accent Tools’ Andrew Way
says of the news: “With both HiKOKI
and Metabo divisions increasingly
sharing infrastructure and procurement functions in Japan and Germany, and both brands having substantial new product pipelines for release in the New Zealand market, this is an optimum time for this distribution alignment to occur.
“By bringing the New Zealand distribution of Metabo alongside HiKOKI in the Accent Tools’ portfolio, dealers now have access to 500+ industrial power tools across two distinct brands, from a supplier that now offers the widest range of industrial power tools, hand tools,
and industrial cleaning equipment in the country.”
Currently, the HiKOKI and Metabo brands have quite distinct marketing approaches and are available through stockists targeting quite different markets.
There will be no immediate changes to the status quo, says Andrew Way: “The first thing we need to do is to learn about the dealer network that we’ve inherited. We’re not going out on day one and forcing massive change.”
Instead, he says, extra resources and work will go into applying “more resource, more marketing, more strategy, and more execution” to help current stockists grow.
In the coming months, however, expect announcements about “a wide range of new models designed with aggressive marketgrowthinmind”,andaboutnew marketing strategies designed to attract consumers of premium, European- designed and -built power tools.
In the meantime, contact metabo@ accent-tools.co.nz for more information.
All about community
For 13 years now Mitre 10 NZ has proudly sponsored the Mitre 10 Community of the Year Ngā Pou Whirinaki o te Tau Award within the New Zealander of the Year Awards.
This year’s winner is the Matakaoa community, near Te Araroa, who decided collectively to embrace vaccination, declaring themselves an “immunity community”.
The community’s innovative campaign to create social unity involved working with storytellers, scientists and doctors to learn about vaccinations and make sense of the information from their own perspectives and community values.
www.mitre10.co.nz
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APRIL 2022 | NZHJ 9