WOW owner buys Auckland landscaping company
Thursday, 2 May 2024
Humphreys Landscaping is the latest acquisition of an Auckland investment company that plans to build a portfolio of 100 New Zealand companies.
Still, a family-owned company best known as the owner of the World of WearableArt (WOW), announced the deal on Thursday, and said it strengthened its urban green offering.
Humphreys Landscaping has been in the Auckland region for several decades, servicing more than 2000 homes and employing 175 people.
Still is on a mission to start or acquire 100 New Zealand companies, and chief executive Hideaki Fukutake said that was anchored on a goal of substance.
“Through the small efforts of each of the 100 businesses or projects they all add up to have a combined positive impact on New Zealand for 100 plus years into the future. Still is the vehicle for this.”
Fukutake said the company was interested in the concept of creating a new type of nature and liked that each Humphreys landscape left a narrative for future generations.
He wanted Humphreys to continue to run the high-quality business they had been successful at, and to continue the growth trajectory they had been achieving.
“And we want them to keep pushing the boundaries of art and nature in a world leading way. We want to see all landscapes tell a story.”
Humphreys specialises in crafting and maintaining high-quality and luxurious gardens, lawns and pools.
The company’s chief executive, Scott Humphreys, said Still’s ethos and way of doing business matched with Humphreys’ values.
“A big factor for us was that they buy and hold on to businesses.”
The partnership would help the company expand its horizons, and achieve its ambitions, but in terms of day-to-day operations it would be business as usual, he said.
Alongside WOW, Still owns Metro Magazine, Hulbert House Hotel in Queenstown, SHAPE Energy Group, Consult Recruitment, National Candles and creative agency DDMMYY.
It also owns Kings Plant Barn, No More Boring workspace design and office plant supplier, and Awa Nursery in its urban green division.
The acquisition of Humphreys would strengthen that division, a company spokesperson said.
“Within some of the main companies are more companies. For example, SHAPE energy is a combination of three companies. So in terms of the 100, we are at 20.”
When choosing the companies it acquired, Still looked for great Kiwi companies, he said. “Each one has to meet our criteria of long term, authentic, unique, beautiful and physical.”
Fukutake, an art-lover whose family moved to New Zealand in 2009, was born in western Japan, and studied business at Chuo University.
He worked in the medical and aged care business, before joining his billionaire father, Soichiro Fukutake, as a director in the family business.
That business is the multi-billion-dollar Benesse Corporation, which focuses on correspondence education and publishing, and is the parent company of Berlitz Language Schools.
The Fukutake family is estimated to have spent US$250 million transforming several islands in the Seto Inland Sea, which had been a toxic industrial dumping ground, into a high-art destination.