Candice Reinecke - A Biography

Candice has 30 years of marketing experience across a very diverse range of products and services - both consumer and business oriented. She is passionate about helping businesses to use their website as an integral part of an overall marketing strategy.

Candice’s initial involvement with Zeald.com was as a client with her and her husband John’s nautical gift business – All At Sea. She was impressed with what she saw at Zeald.com and was excited when an opportunity arose to make a real contribution.

So, in mid 2005, she jumped at the opportunity to become actively involved and has since become an integral and highly valued member of the team.

Candice’s marketing career began – like that of so many eager young graduates – as a management trainee with Unilever in the late ‘70’s in South Africa. Her progress was rapid and within a few years she was managing some iconic brands with extremely large marketing budgets. She recalls being involved in the production of about 45 TV commercials for Omo detergent in a two year period. A highlight was an overseas trip to the UK for an intensive two week Unilever International Advertising Course.

This enabled her to indulge another real passion of hers – traveling. She also managed to ‘squeeze in’ a very eventful seven month OE to Europe (which included a stint as an AISEC trainee in Bilbao) and a one month whirlwind tour of the Seychelles, India, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Japan and Singapore.

But after 5 years of the very structured corporate world, Candice felt it was time for a change and when the opportunity arose to move into a general management role – and gain shares in a company - she jumped at it. And what a change it was: Inspection & Testing Services provided specialist engineering services to the Petroleum Industry!

The challenge was great; Candice relished being involved in all aspects of the business. Over a fifteen year period, the business grew considerably – at times employing up to 350 contractors. From a modest local focus it expanded into Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands – and became the market leader in bulk liquid measurement (in the face of multinational competition). Once again, there were some welcome travel ‘perks’ with the job with Candice having a couple of very memorable trips to the beautiful island of Mauritius.

More traveling and more challenges were to follow!

Following the rise in violence, crime and corruption in South Africa, Candice and her husband John sold up and moved with their two young sons to start a new life in New Zealand in 1997.

Candice then embarked on a four year stint as Marketing Manager for the New Zealand King Salmon Company, who market fresh and smoked salmon and seafood. She is particularly proud of helping to establish Regal Salmon as a well respected brand and market leader.

Having ‘found her feet’ in her new country, (she was now a Kiwi citizen) it was time to make the most of those years of marketing experience. Candice started a new business, Marketing Smarts Ltd, providing marketing consulting & contracting services to companies requiring marketing expertise. She specialises in marketing strategy, brand workshops and promotions.

Following some strategic marketing work for Zeald.com in 2005, Candice contracted to them as Marketing Manager for 4 years. She particularly enjoyed the challenge of helping to create a very unique identity for Zeald.com that clearly differentiates it from the many other web design companies in New Zealand. She has been directly responsible for building the brand’s profile and designing and implementing different lead generation strategies within the organisation.

In October 2009 a new challenge beckoned. Candice felt she could provide real value to a wider range of business owners with her wealth of general and online marketing expertise – and made the decision to join the Zeald.com E –Business consulting team. She is particularly passionate about helping businesses to use their website as an integral part of an overall marketing strategy. She will be focusing a lot of her energies on helping businesses to ‘test measure and tune’ their websites - to ensure they get a continuous improvement in their results and a return on their investment.

Candice is crazy about sport and the outdoors. She has given most things a go over the years – including tennis, squash, netball, hockey, golf, competitive swimming, windsurfing, paddle skiing and snow skiing. Having only started skiing since arriving in New Zealand, she reckons she has only just reached the ‘advanced beginner’ stage. Still on the list of ‘things to do’ is a tandem sky dive and gliding! These days though, her passion is tramping, and having walked the Abel Tasman track in 2006, she is keen to tackle some of the other great NZ walks in the near future.

After the personal safety worries in South Africa, she just loves the peacefulness of New Zealand. She has even been introduced to the joys of camping, boating & fishing – and loves nothing better than taking some ‘time out” to enjoy these activities.

Candice has quite a range of other interests including reading (biographies, business and inspirational /personal growth are her favourites), music ( she appreciates most styles – particularly blues, jazz, light classical, rock and pop – but says she just can’t get excited about rap!), gardening, movies, cooking & entertaining. She also loves writing and takes great pleasure in communicating with an extensive network of family and friends around the world.