‘We think in decades’: How Christchurch’s most enduring businesses have survived

Saturday, 15 June 2024

Only about a quarter of businesses in New Zealand trade for more than a decade. More than half fold inside four years. MICHAEL WRIGHT talked to three long-standing Christchurch companies on how they’ve lasted. And lasted. And lasted…

Team Hutchinson Ford ‒ 1921

It seems like the archetypal family-owned business and it is. Sort of.

Team Hutchinson Ford (THF) is one of those Christchurch names that sticks. Probably because of those, um, memorable radio ads, but also because it has existed for longer than almost all of us.

THF was incorporated in 1921. Ormond Hutchinson was the general manager then, but the family didn’t have its name on the building. It was called simply Ford Motors Canterbury (owned, as it always has been, by a Wellington entity - Colonial Motor Company - which was Ford’s importer, assembler and distributor in New Zealand).

Then in 1936, the Ford Motor Company wanted a proper presence here, meaning any affiliates using the ‘Ford’ name had to surrender it. “So they just used [my grandfather’s name],” current dealer principal John Hutchinson says. Ford Motors Canterbury became Hutchinson Motors Ltd. The marque eventually became available again and in 1989 it became Team Hutchinson Ford.

John Hutchinson is only the fourth dealer principal of the franchise in 103 years. His father (also named Ormond) held the position for 17 years until 1990. Russell Lange (1990-2006) is the only non Hutchinson to have led the business.

“It definitely feels like a family business,” John Hutchinson says. “[People say], ‘He must own it’. It’s not the case.”

Colonial always let the Hutchinsons do their thing, he says, and in 100 years that thing has barely changed. “We really stuck to our knitting. Selling and servicing new and used Ford vehicles.

“I think that has bred an enviable customer loyalty. [People say to us], ‘My grandfather always used to buy cars here and so did my father’.”

It helped that Kiwis have always been a bit obsessed with Fords. Cortinas, Escorts, Falcons, Rangers. But a handy market share doesn’t automatically translate to more than a century in business. “We take a very long term approach to investment,” Hutchinson says. “We think in decades.”

That mindset helped when an earthquake hit Christchurch in 2011 and in the ensuing recovery, Government plans earmarked a green, “campus-style” health precinct in a corridor between Tuam and St Asaph streets, where many car dealerships, including THF, were based. “We [fought] a bit,” Hutchinson says. “We played the slow game and it worked for us.”

The company worked out of portacoms for 10 years. Today, it has a new building. Two, actually, with a cafe and a ‘greenway’ for pedestrians and cyclists running through the middle.

“What we’ve ended up with … is considerably better than anybody ever envisaged,” Hutchinson says. THF will be around for a while yet. And so will those radio ads.

“I used to get hate mail about them. People used to get really annoyed about them. They thought they were stupid. The fact they gave me the feedback means the ad probably worked.”

**Theo’s Fisheries *‒* 1950**

Seventy-five years might seem like a low bar for entry in a story about long-standing Christchurch businesses, but endurance isn’t always just a matter of longevity.

Ask yourself, how many fish and chip shops do you know that are older than that? Or, more specifically, how many older fish and chip shops do you know founded by a Greek Cypriot migrant who grew up in a mountain village miles from the nearest fish and arrived in New Zealand after serving in WWII, including a stint in a prisoner of war camp in Egypt, bought a butchery and transformed it into a business he had no prior experience in?

Thought so. Theo’s Fisheries is in a category all its own. The eponymous Theo Papageorge came to New Zealand in 1949 looking for a better life, post-war. He was, his great-nephew Yotti Ioannou says today, “hungry”.

“It was a nice life but it was a hard life as well. So it was full of opportunity here in New Zealand.

“Lot of Greeks do fish. [Even] when you’re coming from a village in the mountains … it was something that you could learn. Pick up a knife, someone would teach you.”

Papageorge bought a butchery on Riccarton Rd, switched from meat to fish, and learned fast. There were two parts to the business - the fish and chip shopfront, and fish processing. In 1960 he handed control to his nephew and Yotti’s grandfather - Peter Ioannou. The elder Ioannou, who also inherited the name ‘Theo’, then ran the shop for 40 years. In that time, only two things really mattered: respect for customers and fresh product.

“Our reputation was everything according to my grandfather,” Ioannou says. “No-one’s interested in a quick buck. We’re interested in customers coming back and that’s what’s happened. We’ve got generations of customers coming back.”

Ioannou’s aunt and uncle took over the business in the early 2000s and transformed it. They bought adjoining buildings and expanded, greatly increasing the space for fish displays. Theo’s turned from a fish and chip/processing outfit into a fresh fish retailer and wholesaler. Ioannou, the current general manager, is the fourth generation of Theo’s family to work there. His brother is about to join him. And some other brothers. And some cousins.

“We’ve got a small army of Greek Kiwi men who are going to be coming back and working in the business.”

**Peter Timbs Meats *‒* 1985**

If 75 years is low, 39 is positively subterranean. It’s mostly housekeeping, though. The Timbs men have been butchers since 1886. Since then, Samuel, Cyril, Ron, Peter and now Chris have all headed an iteration of a family business that started in Oxford, England, and has ended up in Christchurch, New Zealand. Although each generation threatened, briefly, to break the cycle.

When Cyril Timbs emigrated from the UK in 1910 and settled in Whakatane he started a chicken farm. Butchery soon prevailed, though. He appeared in the Auckland Star classifieds in 1921 wanting to buy a mincer (And sausage filler. Apply with particulars), and in 1940 the Bay of Plenty Beacon observed that when his son Vernon married a reputable local woman it was the coming together of “two well known and widely respected business families”.

The other son, Ron, didn’t stick around in the North Island. “Pop came down to Christchurch and opened a shop in Heathcote,” current Peter Timbs Meats managing director Chris Timbs (Ron’s grandson) says. That business lasted 25 years, but when it started, in the early 1960s, succession planning was non-existent. Peter Timbs (Ron’s son, Chris’ father) was living in Perth at the time, doing something like a mid-century version of an OE. When he returned, it wasn’t to the family business. He worked for a butcher in New Brighton instead, where he befriended fellow butchery scion Todd Heller. He opened the first of his namesake butcheries in Cashmere in 1985 and later helped Heller establish his own processed meat empire (Peter Timbs was an early director of Hellers Ltd).

When Chris Timbs came of age he didn’t see butchery, or any trade, in his future. “I was off to varsity but Dad said, ‘No’,” he says.

“[He said] you can do an apprenticeship first and you can do the first half in Germany.” And so Chris found himself in Kulmbach, northern Bavaria. A town famous for nothing except sausages.

Chris duly joined the family business and took over the Edgeware store in 1999. Today, he is managing director and sees butchery not as a trade but a higher calling. “It’s an artform, really. An underrated one.”

“It’s easy to work in a supermarket putting stickers on something. Butchers need to know all the cuts and how to cook it and sell it to the customers.

Chris Timbs’ 19-year-old son just started with the business, and is still finding his way. The boss worries the latest generation is “a bit of hard work”, but concedes that perhaps for the first time the Timbs’ legacy is secure:

“He's better than me when I was 19.”