Kia Kaha Clothing
Key issues which have had to be faced as the company has grown
Michael Campbell golfing in Kia Kaha designs (Click to enlarge)
A constant issue for companies such as Kia Kaha is that of ensuring a sufficient cash flow to maintain production levels.
"You've got to pay for everything before you get paid and that's always been an issue. Its not so bad now, but it certainly was when we were building up," says Dan.
Other key decisions have centred on how much of their production to outsource to other companies and how much to retain in-house.
"That's an ongoing issue. How much do we do ourselves? How many people to sew do we employ? Do we do all our own printing for the team wear? What are the economics? Is there too much involved in doing it all, too much hassle? How fast should we be expanding production? Are we stretching our resources too wide? Those types of decisions are having to be made all the time."
The Kia Kaha store (Click to enlarge)
Dan admits that at one stage he and Charmaine were doing too many things themselves and some aspects of the business were getting stretched.
"We've had to bring people in to manage certain areas, which has been vital. Its easy to say that we should have done that right from the start, but at the end of the day if you don't have the resources to do it, then you can't do it."
Somewhat surprisingly, for a business of this nature, design issues have caused few problems.
"We've had the odd person say, 'Hey that looks like my design' or 'I did one like that', but over all the years we've been involved with the company that's only happened two or three times."
