Louise Cooper, Business and Communications Administrator at the Tararua District Council had the following to say about the Tararua Business Network.
“We have over 1800 SME’s (small and medium sized enterprises) in the Tararua District and we recognised that if we can grow business by one employee, we have a substantial business platform. These small businesses have a distinct role to play in our economy and often provide a means of entry into business, new entrepreneurial talent and a career for those who value economic independence.
We facilitate their growth by enabling, linking and capturing the opportunities that can be derived by leveraging off local talent and the expertise available through our regional partners. With a collective group of enthusiastic experts available to support small-to-medium-sized business in the district, the Tararua Business Network focuses on enabling, facilitating and linking our businesses to experts in order to support their growth and sustainability.
The relationships we have grown and developed with our business partners are vitally important and we have been referring both new and existing businesses to Dave Craig from the BCC on a fortnightly basis, for almost a year now. Indeed one of the businesses referred to Dave, will be based in our Incubation Office in mid-April 2016 and is using the business model canvas to develop his value proposition.
Our office in Dannevirke opened in December 2014 and we could see from our geographical stats that we were missing opportunities to assist business in the southern part of the district, and therefore opened our satellite office in Pahiatua in February 2016.
We aim to replicate the services we provide in Dannevirke to Pahiatua and are currently targeting the agribusiness sector and encouraging them to contact us. We are keen to promote to this sector the support available through the BCC from their individual consultations, Sprout programme and the Innovate competition, which we are proud to sponsor each year.”