I began working for Brother as a regional account manager for retail where I was responsible for all training, merchandising and sales into all major retail brands in NZ. My primarily retail customers were Warehouse Stationary, Noel Leemings, Harvey Norman, all electrical branches, Paperplus, Office Products Depot and many IT resellers. Within a year I was moved into the ‘Small to Medium Business’ (SMB) program and then further into the ‘Managed Print Solutions’ (MPS) program that was entirely new to South Island through Brother. These roles involved developing relationships, building trust and applying a new program with training. It meant the creation of contracts and ability to train on the full process from start to finish. It was engaging with both reseller and customers, helping to build a new service for resellers that was easy to use and effective to further expand their base of IT services thus growing companies in a field they were not apart of before. This was regarded as a ‘Business Development Manager’ (BDM) role and saw great success in implementation across South Island.

I began working for warehouse stationery in the South City branch as a casual and quickly became a permanent team member. Within a few weeks I became the furniture specialist. After a month the Christchurch earthquakes struck but I stayed with the company and worked in various stores. Throughout my time at Papanui I became a keyholder and moved back to the rebuilt South City. It was at this store I worked towards being an assistant store manager which I was appointed in July 2013. I completed my first financial year as assistant store manager with great results. Since my time in Papanui I have also been a store manager of the Hornby branch for a 4 month period on secondment and finished off as the assistant store manager of Belfast.

I began working on the fruit and vegetable department for 6 months where I was required to monitor the quality of stock available to the public consumer. I moved departments to fresh food cabinets in order to learn more about the processes required for the successful running of a supermarket. During my time at Booths I entered into a trainee manager course and completed an NVQ in Retail as provided by the company. This helped to increase my knowledge further on the management of a large supermarket that has many different departments. I enjoyed working with the public and solving any queries raised, while ensuring the high quality of goods sold was maintained by accurate date rotation and quality checking.

While working in the family business I worked my way up from being a newspaper delivery person to the level of assistant manager where I was required to manage staff and handle large sums of money. I was trained to use the accounts database and other computer systems, including solving lottery problems in order to provide effective running of the business. While carrying out these tasks I was still very much involved in areas of solving customer problems and the general interactions with customers.