Blog

Written by Anna Gilhooly, Co-Founder anna@plyhome.co.nz

Well, hello there: it’s been ages! So…we‘ve been a touch quiet (actually, resoundingly silent) lately and we wanted to let you know why.

Essentially, we went through the classic business problem of growing too busy, too quickly. People really loved our furniture and we loved sending it all over New Zealand: from Waiheke Island down to rural Queenstown. But it all happened in an absolute flash and two creatively-brained people were suddenly thrust into the business of operations, which wasn’t exactly our happy place. 

So…we did a lot of talking and a lot of listening to some very clever people about what to do.  As a result: we are so thrilled to announce that we have a very happy ending to our story, because we’ve found the perfect people to help take Plyhome to the next level, and even better: we didn’t have to go offshore to find them. Plyhome remains NZ made.

They hugely believe in the potential of our designs. They know manufacturing inside-out: we’ve got massive respect for what they do and how they do it. Their factory is a picture of Kanban efficiency, but it’s also a workplace of craftsmanship, with a level of care and attention to detail that made our heart’s sing. They  welcomed us staying involved in design and marketing. And to top it all off, they’re lovely, lovely people. Below is a pic of me with some of our new Plyhome family members (and yes, ten adults worth of weight on that Plyhome Junior Bed - told you it was strong!)

So…long story short, Plyhome is back. We’re a bigger team now, we’re definitely better and we all cannot wait to give our little furniture brand the future it absolutely deserves. On behalf of our now much bigger furniture family,  thank you for your ongoing support. 

We've been fans of Idealog since way back.  It was actually one of the things that got me into marketing waaay back in the day. My dad used to shoot editorial photos for them and I began reading them cover to cover when they came home.  It's still one of our favourite sources of NZ business and design inspiration, so we were really chuffed with this interview about what Plyhome was up to and why.  A big thanks to Arriba PR for teeing this up, and also to Caitlin Salter for the sterling write-up.

Plyhome is a proud Hutt Business. We're surrounded by some seriously impressive and world leading tech innovators out here in the Hutt, and they're a pretty humble bunch too: more the "heads down and lets secure some global contracts shall we?" approach as opposed to shouting about it with massive advertising campaigns.

We feel right at home here. So with all this in mind, we were thrilled to be asked by Irwin Munro to take part in the Hutt City STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics & Manufacturing) Festival, which is all about building the Hutt Valley into one of New Zealand’s leading export and economic growth centres. STEMM gave us the chance to showcase some of our prototypes for the first time and give a few talks to people about what we were up to and why.  

Simon saw our pop-up then interviewed us in a fake bedroom in an empty retail space, as you do! What started out as an article for our local paper was then picked up by Stuff's national Business page, and we are very grateful for the early exposure this gave us. Thanks Simon! The resulting article is here for you to read.