Fish City is the story of three fishing enthusiasts angling in on a gap in the retail market for specialty fishing.
After 30 years in the business, Ross Christensen, Kevin Taylor and Jono Hewson have realised their dream of delivering one of the best one-stop fishing shops in New Zealand.
October is birthday time for Fish City and the team, which has grown to 45 including Ross’ son Max, are celebrating with a $30,000 FC 430T boat package giveaway.
“The giveaway is something special for our 30th birthday. The boat that we’re giving away is the first boat we released in 2011. It was the first model that FC boats built and Mercury’s also bringing out a new 30 horsepower motor so we thought that lined up quite nicely,” Max says.
It’s even more fitting given Mercury have been partners with Fish City for 30 years as well.
If you’d have asked Ross, Kevin and Jono about the future of the business 30 years ago, the idea that Fish City would become a landmark fishing and hunting retail outlet was something they were striving for right from the get-go.
“The initial thought was let’s open a tackle shop. At the time there was no Mercury dealer in the Waikato due to Marine Services finishing up. Ross also had a relationship with Bill Mackrell from Ramco boats and Phil South who had Voyager Trailers. They said, ‘Why don’t you sell boats and motors,’ and that business plan was conceived as well,” Kevin says.
Despite coming from different backgrounds – Ross was a car mechanic, Kevin Taylor worked in retail and Jono Hewson the first qualified marine technician in New Zealand – they managed to complement the business and each other with their different acumen.
It was only a few short months after hatching the plan that they opened the doors to Fish City on October 1, 1992 about 100 yards down the road from where the current Fish City is – with Ross as general manager, Kevin the showroom manager and Jono managing the workshop.
It wasn’t long before Fish City had become household name, as far as Waikato fishermen were concerned.
In 1995, Fish City joined MarineLink (now known as Boating & Outdoors) buying group to expand their reach of products and service, and moved into a new and bigger location across the road.
Just four years later they had outgrown their second premises and made the final move to 265 Kahikatea Drive.
With their hooks firmly sunk in the Waikato fishing market, Ross decided it was time to open a second store in Auckland. Fish City Albany opened its doors in December 2001 and quickly became a leader in the Auckland fishing industry.
By 2004, Ross was looking to target the boating market and purchased the Hamilton Roger Gills store. Rebranded as Boating World, a mecca for boating buffs was born.
The interest in fishing and boating sparked a very successful career for Ross and Jono in boat and ski racing.
‘We set up a number of really competitive ski race boats for years and years. Even in the early days of ski racing, we attended a family class on the Waikato River with one of Ross’ boats. With the Ramco I put on a really big engine on a small boat and we had a crack with that one as well. We just went from there, setting up a number of really high-performance race boats that we did very well on and then won a lot of races with our boats and set up many more for customers as well,” Jono says
When May 2007 rolled around, Ross merged Boating World and Fish City Hamilton, giving the Waikato the ultimate superstore in both fishing and boating.
It wasn’t to be smooth sailing though. The Global Financial Crisis hit Fish City hard with a plummet in sales of luxury items, marine sales took a dive.
“We had layoffs, the staff took pay cuts, we cut back our spending. It was an extremely stressful and hard time to get through. And it wasn’t just for a year, it was about five years. So that was a really tough time for us to get through,” Ross says.
Working together as a team, Ross says, helped them come out the other side.
“We fought really hard to survive. If we hadn’t had the tenacity we possibly could have chucked in the towel and a lot of others closed down during that time.”
It wasn’t the first time they considered shutting shop; in the early days they were hit by a spate of ram raids and rather than give up they invested in $100,000 worth of high voltage electric fencing and other security measures.
“We set the industry standard doing that. It’s fairly common now for most marine shops to have that sort of security, both here and Australia,” Ross says.
Not one to let a few setbacks get in the way of a good business plan, Ross is always looking ahead with the team to diversify and grow Fish City.
Realising there was a gap in the market for practical, good quality, safe and cost-effective aluminium boat and aspiring to set a new benchmark, Ross came up with a concept for FC Boats’ FC 430T..
Working with a ccontractor in Tauranga to produce the CAD drawing, Ross incorporated his boating knowledge with information he gleaned from customers and the FC 430T was born. By December 2011, the first prototype hit the water and was sold almost immediately.
“We’ve sold hundreds of those FC 430Ts, they’ve probably become a benchmark for a small boat in New Zealand,” Ross says.
The range has grown to 11 models up to seven-metres and a seven-metre amphibious boat that is also proving to be very popular in the market.
After almost 20 years of exclusively being a marine recreation store, they set to aimed their sights on the hunting market.
Looking for a way to keep sales up throughout the years, Kevin brought the hunting range into the store in 2011.
“We decided to diversify into the hunting, outdoor side of things basically to try and take the seasonality out of our trading and take us through the quieter winter months. It proved very successful,” Kevin says.
“There’s also a lot of crossover from fishermen to hunters and vice versa, so they both complement each other,” Ross says.
By 2016, the factory expanded, and the entire range was now being manufactured in-house in Hamilton. Nurturing the next generation into the business, Ross’s son Max joined the FC Boats team in the factory as a boat builder in 2015.
Coming from a general engineering apprenticeship at Longveld, there were a lot of skills he could use for boat building and he worked alongside the experienced boat builders for several months before taking on a more managerial role in the factory.
In 2016, the decision was made to sell Fish City Albany. It meant more time to concentrate on building and developing FC Boats and focus on the original Fish City store.
Moving with the digital times, Fish City Hamilton launched a successful website (after three failed attempts) and fishcityhamilton.co.nz went live in 2018.
Little did they know how important that was to be for the business with the COVID pandemic just around the corner.
In 2020, only a month post-lockdown, Hunting & Outdoors made its debut in the digital space and was met with huge support from customers.
After seeing the response to huntingandoutdoors.co.nz, fishcityhamilton.co.nz underwent changes to become a Shopify based website like its hunting counterpart.
In November 2020, after 10 years of plotting and planning, the groundwork began for a brand-new workshop for Fish City Hamilton. Amongst the pre-Christmas rush, the workshop was completed.
In the scorching heat of January 2021, the entire upgrade was completed fitting Fish City out with a new workshop, concreted yard and new outwards good area.
The factory is also getting a makeover and doubling in size, with an opening date set for early next year.
Over the years the team has picked up a myriad of awards and only four years after the business opened, they won Waikato Small Business of the Year and Overall Business of the Year in the 1996 Waikato Chamber of Commerce Business Awards.
The same year they were also awarded No.1 Ramco dealer and No.1 Mercury dealer. Just last year they received the Marketing & Social Media Award at the Waikato Chamber of Commerce Business Awards.
The team have recently been named a finalist in the 2022 Waikato Chamber of Commerce Business Awards having entered the Innovation category for their amphibious boat and the Business Growth and Strategy category.
Continuing to develop the e-commerce is one of the ways Fish City is looking to the future of the business.
There is the boat export market to consider as well, with New Zealand boats proving popular in Australia and beyond.
“Australia and the Pacific Islands are very popular export markets for New Zealand plate boat builders. There’s actually markets all over the world that we haven’t even looked at, because we’ve been struggling to keep up with the New Zealand market. So, there’s plenty of potential,” Ross says.
To enter the draw for the FC 430T boat package, simply spend $50 in store or online at www.fishcityhamilton.co.nz
