Mangawhai boys riding the Internet wave

Media Release - 4th July 08
Rodney’s Mangawai Heads is pretty much home territory for leading web design company Zeald because its where the company’s founders put aside their surfboards long enough to get started in business.

Back in 2000 David Kelly, aged 21, along with his younger brother Brent and cousin Hamish Braddick founded Zeald, which is one of the largest and fastest-growing website design and e-business consultancy companies in New Zealand.

Now based in Albany, Zeald employs 30 operational staff and has four staff dedicated to research and development. Additionally it has 21 specialised E-Business Consultants based throughout New Zealand. David is now chief executive, Brent is research and development director, and Hamish is creative director.

Last year their company made the top 20 in the annual Deloittes Unlimited Fast 50 awards, after chalking up sales grown of almost 400% in three years. It also won the Excellence in Marketing category in the 2007 Westpac Enterprise North Shore Business Excellence Awards.

David says a large part of Zeald’s success has been its “give to receive” philosophy which is why the company has a huge array of free resources available on its website (www.zeald.com).

That approach has also seen it run more than 100 free seminars, involving more than 5000 attendees (Warkworth gets its turn on July 17th at the Walton Park Motor Lodge and at Whangaparaoa on 23rd July. Anyone interested in attending can register at www.zeald.com .

David says more than 200,000 small-medium businesses in New Zealand are either not getting enough from their websites, or don't even know where to start.

“We have been operating for eight years and have thousands of customers throughout New Zealand. That means we can deliver the benefits of our experience and economies of scale to our customers, while also providing them local service through our consultant network.”

David’s path to his present position involved more than living at the beach. His family moved around New Zealand including stints in Auckland, Ngaruawahia, Auckland and Wellsford, before settling at Mangawhai Heads. He completed his college education from home with the New Zealand Correspondence School, obtaining a bursary before going to university.

He completed a Bachelor of Information Sciences at Massey University in Albany, receiving the prestigious top Massey scholar award at his graduation.

Brent is another honours graduate from Massey. He left Rodney College at 16 to “get on with it” and topped Massey University in many different subjects including accounting, finance, management, marketing, economics, computer science and information systems. He elected to pursue computer science and on graduation he received the Massey Scholar award a year after David received it for the same degree.
The two brothers also share a passion for music, with both playing in the popular rock band Mozelee.

Hamish’s route into the company was slightly different. He completed a degree in graphic design from the Auckland University of Technology then moved to Christchurch to be near the ski fields, becoming one of the countries leading souvenir T-shirt illustrators in the process.

After working as a freelance website designer he went to the UK, landing a job as the Website Design Director for a high-profile design agency - Yoyo Creative. From there he developed his interest in website usability, focusing on website designs that not only look good, but are highly functional and achieve results.

Called home to help found Zeald (he was also missing the NZ surf and the snow) Hamish became an integral part of the company’s success.
Now all three of them are riding a different sort of wave, one that promises to see the business they started head offshore to bigger markets like Australia.

As David says, “We want to be a world-class company. In the future I expect we will be operating in a number of countries, and be the dominant force in our field in New Zealand.”