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Business

WeWork Headquarters, Shanghai
WeWork Headquarters, Shanghai

How did Linehouse come about?

I moved from Wellington to Shanghai in 2009 with an opportunity to work for the international Architectural practice, Neri & Hu. I chose China, as I felt it was evolving rapidly. Shanghai had a progressive pace, with less design boundaries and entrepreneurs more willing to take risks. Eventually I felt I needed to pursue my own business to allow my design ethos to evolve and be recognised. So along with my colleague we started Linehouse.

One of those entrepreneurs who were willing to take a chance early on was WeWork. They were just starting out in Asia, loved our design ethic and flew us to NY. We ended up designing their China HQ in Shanghai, located in a historical building; an opium and ammunition factory. We  repurposed the building, revealing the history where appropriate, carefully balancing new and old. The design process and outcome was well received internationally and for a small company starting out the press was great.

This helped build our profile, but like any business there was still a huge amount of hard work ahead.

Why did you choose to focus on the Asian market?

As many Asian cities are modernizing there are a lot of opportunities, clients are willing to take risks, embrace new design and there is a sense of momentum in the design industry. Even amongst all the developing Asian countries, the sense of design, craft and the willingness to involve good design is very real which for the right designers provides opportunity.

In New Zealand there is often a lot of regulation that you have to work with to have your ideas realized, which sometimes makes the design process more challenging.

More recently in Hong Kong I saw a gap in the design industry which I wanted to pursue. Much of the city’s development is dominated by a few main developers and I wanted to offer a fresh young perspective on design. We got our first high profile Hong Kong project; a restaurant called John Anthony, a modern take on dim sum for a well established F&B operator, this project enabled me to make the move to Hong Kong.

The client backed our fresh approach, and saw it as a steer away from old world luxury design you see predominantly in Hong Kong’s hospitality industry. The international recognition in press and awards was again very helpful to have the design be seen and socialized what we as a design studio offer. This allowed us further opportunity to connect with the leading developers with projects that are aligned with our design ethic. With the move to Hong Kong proven successful, we now use Hong Kong and Shanghai as a base for working on projects throughout Asia, Europe and Pacific.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

I always want our work to be contextual and meaningful, we do a lot of research on the project and its context to establish the driving narrative. When starting a project we will investigate the site, location, history, local culture and craft to draw a concept from. In doing so I believe it brings an enriched experience.

There is a huge amount of history in craft in Asia / Pacific to draw from and I am constantly inspired by this. Working with local craftsman and localizing our projects in the sourcing of materials and workmanship.

From a design perspective, the studio operates as a platform to investigate the rituals of inhabitation and how these daily moments can be celebrated through design, transforming the mundane into performative acts.

What has been your greatest challenge throughout your career? What has been your greatest achievement?

It was challenging starting my own company at the age of 30 in a country like China, where nothing is straightforward. The language and the cultural sensitivities were very challenging. The pace of construction and time frames for projects are always demanding in Asia, often we have had to embrace a sense of flexibility in our processes and practice in order to get the best outcome. When I moved to Hong Kong, the challenge was again repeated, with the benefits of what I had learnt perhaps with the added pressure of bigger jobs and soon doubling the studio team and managing those responsibilities.

Perhaps my greatest recognition of achievement to date was being awarded the Dezeen Emerging Interior Design Practice Award at the end of last year (2019) in London. This is one of the top platform’s on an international scale for our practice to be recognized, and provides some satisfaction for the hard work we put in.

How do you stay connected to New Zealand whilst living abroad?

I grew up in a rural community in Gisborne. My background draws me close to the land and from that I am always conscious of introducing these forms into my work. Home remains New Zealand, that is where my heart is and I’m always drawn back there and for longer and longer periods with new family commitments and work opportunities.

What’s next for Linehouse?

I would like to see some of the NZ/Australia projects come live as I spend more time in Australasia so I can bring back my learning’s in Asia to the Pacific. There is a small pool of designers in NZ and I think I can offer a fresh youthful female perspective to the architecture and design space drawing from my experience across Asia and Europe with many top operators.

As a business we are fortunate to have navigated our way through different disruptions in the region especially in the last 12 months and are currently loaded with good projects. We have benefited in having diversification across the regions in terms of project locations especially more recently as the regions are impacted at different times.

So we need to continue to focus on keeping the right opportunities coming our way and this is especially important now when economic environment is challenging. At the same time always ensuring our design is relevant and fresh.

As a taste of our bigger projects that we are currently working on:

  • An architecture and Interior design of a 10,000m2 modern office building in Macau;
  • A large residential project with amazing views of Hong Kong south coast;
  • The design of the food market for the new Booking.com campus in central Amsterdam;
  • A restaurant in Osaka for W Hotel opening this year;
  • An upscale Foodhall in an iconic building in central Hong Kong just opened;
  • Two multi level commercial retail projects (45,000m2) in Bangkok.

CONTRIBUTOR

Briar Hickling

Co-founder

Linehouse

Kea member

There are several accelerators and incubators across New Zealand already. Why did you choose to expand across the ditch?

We’ve seen some key catalysts for startup growth such as the government’s budget allocation into venture funds and the first wave of startup success (RocketLab, Pushpay, Allbirds, Xero, etc), which culminated in a booming NZ ecosystem. But there is still a lack of a unified startup community, which brings together founders, operators and investors from across organisations, across the country and across the world. Startmate unites all parties by one purpose – to help raise and shape the ambition of Kiwi founders building the next global legacy. Kiwi founders want and need access to world-class mentors with global reach.

We have already been receiving more and more applications from NZ companies for the Sydney and Melbourne cohorts. We have invested in three NZ companies which were part of MEL18, MEL19 and SYD20, who had to move to Australia to join the cohort. Rather than the startups moving for us, we’re moving to where they are.

Tell us more about Startmate, and why it differs from the usual Founder programmes?

Startmate was brought to life in 2011 with the core principle of founders helping founders. We believe that (ex-)founders have the most empathy for early-stage founders and that the best advice comes from those who are a couple of steps ahead of you. Every one of our mentors is a founder, ex-founder or early-stage employee in a startup.

Another underlying principle at Startmate is having ‘skin in the game’. Each mentor is also an investor in each cohort. This beautifully aligns everyone’s incentives, as the startups success becomes the mentors’ success. Startmate has the full values alignment of founders helping founders and putting the money where their mouth is.

Now that New Zealand is at Level 1 and business is starting to move again, what opportunities are there for kiwi startups to go global, from the safety of New Zealand?

COVID levelled the playing field across the world. It doesn’t matter for customers nor investors if you’re talking to someone down the road or on the other side of the world – the meeting is over Zoom. This is a massive opportunity to get all the benefits of funding and reach, whilst having much lower cost and attracting talent which other companies can’t tap into.

Kea has a global community of Kiwi expats and friends of New Zealand, many of whom are willing to help kiwi businesses succeed globally. What influence can they have on the Startmate programme, and how can they get involved?

Startmate has a mentor network across New Zealand, Australia and San Francisco. Our mentors fulfil the three key pillars for us – investment, selection and mentoring. As each mentor invests heir own money ($10k up to $250k per cohort), our mentors also get to decide who will be part of the cohort and then which startups they want to be mentoring. The program is now fully developed for mentors to participate wherever they are in the world.

Are there companies you’d love to see join the Startmate programme?

We’re completely industry-agnostic. Software, hardware, aerospace, robots, you name it! Our sweet spot is between a $1-4m valuation and from first customers to $1m in annual revenue.

And similarly are there mentors that you’d love to have eg. With specific skill sets/expertise/backgrounds?

Founders and ex-founders or anyone who joined a startup and scaled a business unit to 100+ people. We don’t look for specific skillsets, but empathy for founders.

CONTRIBUTOR

Michael Batko

CEO

Startmate

Kea member

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Maryellen, Jeremy, and Jeremy’s half-sister Kate.

How did Piha Pies come about?

I’m from Auckland and moved to the UK in 1991 as a young cameraman and I’m now a Director of Photography working for all the channels including the BBC, C4 and most recently Netflix.

As a Kiwi, I always wondered why you couldn’t get a decent pie in the UK like the ones in NZ. So after many years of talking about it, in 2018 my wife Susanne and I took the plunge and started a little side business making pies from our converted outbuilding in Forest Hill. Then in September that year, we set up our first market stall at Norwood Feast market in South London – and quickly followed up with other markets, pop-ups and events.

We called named it Piha Pies after my favourite beach on the west coast near Auckland, where I spent a lot of time in my teens, and it’s where I return to every time I’m home and I always grab a pie or two from The Piha Store.

The pies were baked on old family recipes. What’s the story behind that?

This is quite a story. I always enjoyed cooking and when I was younger and it was a toss up whether to go into cooking or into TV work. TV work won out and cooking was put on the back burner.  Then about 6 years ago I found out a huge family secret. On a Christmas visit back to Auckland, my mum and dad sat me down and told me that I had in fact been adopted and that my birth mother wanted to get in touch with me. Although this was a massive shock, there was a silver lining…..

3 months later, after the dust settled I decided to find out who my birth mother was, so I tentatively picked up the phone and asked the adoption agency my mother’s name. I immediately googled her and up popped a newspaper article about Maryellen, the owner of a well renowned cafe in Kohu Kohu, Northland – famous for its pies.

Many months later after many email exchanges, getting to know each other and bonding over pie talk and a general love of food and cooking, we met up in NZ. I showed her photos of my childhood and got to sample some of her famous pies, which were laid out for my welcome. Talk turned to my dream of having a pie shop in London one day and plans were hatched to be taught some of Maryellen’s recipes. So, about a year later when she eventually visited me and Susanne in London, she taught me the family pie recipes. All the recipes were in Maryellen’s head, nothing was written down. We spent the next year practising her recipes, perfecting our own recipes and testing them out on family, friends and neighbours.

For our first market, Maryellen and my new-found sister Kate, also a great pie maker, happened to be over from New Zealand. They were able to give helpful advice and were like a lucky charm because the 100 pies sold out and Piha Pies got really positive feedback.

Do you attract mainly homesick Kiwi customers?

There are always lots of Kiwi customers at the pie stall but it is mostly Brits. What is incredible though is the number of British pie eaters coming back across the market to tell us they are the best pies they’ve ever had – which proves the power and draw of the Kiwi pie.

Since lockdown, we have started doing delivery of our pies – and there is a huge proportion of Kiwi buyers looking for comfort food from home.

Are there any particular moments that stand out in your journey?

It was an incredible moment to find out that we had won Best Newcomer in the British Pie Awards this year on top of a few other awards.

But the thing that really ignited our journey was the revelation that after all the years of talking about opening a pie shop my biological mother was already a professional pie maker and she was able to give such invaluable advice on how to start a food business.

Do you have a personal favourite pie?

We love them all and it’s hard to choose which is a favourite. It depends on what mood you’re in but if we had to choose, mine would be Pepper Steak and Susanne’s is Potato Top.

What are your plans for the future?

We want to expand the business so we can start supplying other businesses – we’ve had lots of requests from Delis, Butchers and Cafes to supply them with our pies. We would love to eventually start selling them in high end food stores and supermarkets so Kiwis and Brits across the UK can get hold of them easily. So we will be looking for investment to move into a bigger kitchen and start employing a team to upscale our output and distribution. 

CONTRIBUTOR

Briar Hickling

Co-founder

Linehouse

Kea member

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