The quadruple threats on a mission to make Christchurch the 'best it can be'
Saturday, 29 June 2024
A few years ago, Jamie and Ashleigh Moir were two university students, just trying to bring electronic music back after Canterbury’s earthquakes.
Now, the newly-weds own four businesses, are mixing cocktails on a rooftop and bringing Grammy-winning artists to the Waipara Valley.
“There were many times when our corporate jobs would’ve been easier. But we're not here for jobs, we're here to … build with [post-quake] Christchurch and build our own legacy,” Jamie said.
Jamie, 27, and Ashleigh Moir, 26, are born and bred in Christchurch, and are determined to make the city “the best it can be”.
As the owners of entertainment company Sub180 and new year festival Rolling Meadows, and co-owners of Hello Sunday cafe and now Pink Lady Rooftop bar, Jamie acknowledges the pair are “highly driven”.
Their first venture was SIMBA (South Island Mixing and Bass Association) while they were students at the University of Canterbury in 2017. They wanted to create “a real revival” of the night-life scene at Sol Square and Ministry nightclub, lost in the 2010-11 earthquakes, Jamie said.
They noticed a gap in the market, so took the skills they’d learned from SIMBA and started their first business, Sub180, in 2018, with $5000 they’d managed to save up from their part-time jobs.
They took a “punt” when they hosted Sub180’s first music festival - Urban Jungle in 2019, headlined by Kiwi rapper Savage - while still working full-time corporate jobs, Jamie said.
“It was a complete failure.”
They sold only 300 tickets and lost “literally every dollar we had”, he said.
They gave it another crack in 2020 - headlined by UK drum and bass artist Bou. This time it was a “huge success” as they had a more coherent drum and bass lineup and a more established brand, Jamie said.
They were still working full-time, in HR and recruitment, but during the Covid pandemic in 2021 they were ready to quit the corporate world and take on a new business.
Popular Christchurch cafe Hello Sunday was up for sale at the time, and they decided to buy it, using money they’d originally saved to go towards a house deposit.
Their lawyer told them they’d be idiots to buy a cafe, and their parents begged them to not do it.
“We kind of just ignored all advice, as typical 23-year-olds,” Ashleigh said.
Having never served a table, run a front of house, or had any job in hospitality before, the duo worked closely with the previous owners to learn the ropes.
Running a restaurant during the pandemic proved difficult due to changing restrictions on crowd numbers. They experienced a lot of food waste and couldn’t even give it away to foodbanks.
“At one point we lost literally $30k worth of food. And we were just like, ‘we are completely screwed again’,” Jamie said.
The shock of such a downturn “really made [them] grow as business people”, Ashleigh said.
Jamie said being “the crazy people that [they] are”, after buying Hello Sunday, the Moirs started a national drum and bass arena tour called Mayhem, and completed their dream of creating a new year festival - all in 2021.
They’d been fans of Auckland’s Northern Bass event, driving 17 hours in previous years to attend, and thought Christmas needed a new year festival too.
They came up with Rolling Meadows - a two-night R&B, drum and bass and pop music festival with four stages, held an hour north of Christchurch, in Waipara.
Jamie said they door-knocked and cold-called “200 to 300” farmers and winery owners while looking for a site to hold the event, and eventually landed on The Bone Line Winery.
But there was one big issue: rocks.
For 70 days during winter, the Moirs and their friends and family blasted music while clearing rocks from the site by hand.
When Covid restrictions eased a bit, allowing big events again, the first Rolling Meadows festival almost sold out.
“We fluked it,” Ashleigh said.
But their second festival, in 2022, resulted in a loss as they had more competition from rival festivals that were finally back up and running.
They tried again in 2023 as they “truly believed that the South Island needed this new year’s festival in Canterbury for Cantabrian people”, Jamie said.
It was a “huge success”, selling 8000 tickets and solidifying the couple’s place in the new year festival scene.
This year’s headliners were recently announced to be US rapper Wiz Khalifa and UK singer Natasha Bedingfield.
“We’ve got probably one of the best lineups in the country,” Jamie said.
They’ve also expanded their other business ventures this year, saving rooftop bar Pink Lady from permanent closure along with their business partners, Sarah Carr and Andrew Tranter.
Carr met the Moirs as a barista at Hello Sunday and quickly worked her way up to co-owner.
“I feel very lucky to be in business with such great people,” she said.
“Everyone's just really close, we got each other's backs and are working really hard to achieve the same goal, but also have fun at the same time.”
The Moirs took over Pink Lady in Christchurch’s CBD in May and had managed to break even already, despite the cost of living crisis.
“We believe in Pink Lady,” Jamie said.
“I think that this summer is going to hopefully, fingers crossed, all sort of click into place with Pink Lady and the economy and New Zealand… We're pretty optimistic.
“We just want to see Christchurch flourish.”