Ron Giles - A Biography

Ron’s business background includes 20 years of working for the major corporate, Mair & Company Ltd, the biggest exporter in New Zealand at that time. Ron ended up as Managing Director of Mair Industrial Marketing Ltd, a medium-sized importing and marketing company.

Ron then started his own business, Leather Technology Ltd, supplying machinery to the New Zealand leather processing industry. One of the perks of being in the leather business was a trip to Paris for the World Leather Fair every second year – it was a tough job but someone had to do it!

When the leather manufacturing industry began moving offshore, Ron developed a Business Consultancy, specialising in Business Planning and Strategic Planning, a role he still continues today.

Ten years ago, Ron started his writing career, penning articles for national fishing magazines. It was natural that he wrote about his greatest passion – troutfishing. Ron has been chasing the elusive trout for 30 years and had always harboured a desire to convey the joys of flyfishing to a wider audience. This writing soon led to Ron’s first book – ‘Hooked on Trout’ published in 2000. That book sold 6500 copies - an impressive first effort as a best seller in New Zealand is considered to be 3000 copies.

Three more troutfishing books quickly followed and then Ron had the idea to write a book for the one million New Zealand babyboomers as there was no book addressing the critical issues being faced by that generation. The book, entitled ‘All the f words for Babyboomers’, was published in 2006.

Ron has put up a large website www.babyboomersguide.co.nz to support the book and the experience of running his own Zeald website has been invaluable in helping Ron understand his clients’ website requirements. Ron’s website cracked the Alexa.com (a website popularity measurement tool) top two million worldwide websites after only 3 months - showing Ron does practise what he preaches!

Ron has slotted into the Zeald team as though he has been there from the beginning, thanks to his passion for Internet Marketing and his insistence on the benefits of quality content. Not quite so appreciated by the Zeald’s staff might be Ron’s irreverent sense of humour but at least that ensures that the office is never quiet when Ron is present! No one is safe from his jibes – least of all Andy Falk, the Customer Service Manager, who just loves giving as good as he gets from Ron!

As a natural consequence of his professional writing skills, Ron has become one of the ‘in house’ writers for Zeald and has a watching brief to carry out the final editing and copy proofing for many of the major Zeald publications.

This writing ability is of great benefit to Ron’s website clients. A critical part of the website process is ‘wireframing’ the main pages and Ron’s clients have the bonus of the services of a professional writer to assist them with the copy, content and layout of the all-important major conversion pages. This has been commented on by clients such as Martin Albrecht, owner of the large website www.goodground.com who said: “I don’t know how we would have got our website together without the help of Ron. Not only did he write 40,000 words for our website but his wireframing ability and his expert Internet knowledge has proven invaluable to us ‘online beginners’. Thanks to Ron, GoodGround Ltd has a great website – one that virtually sells real estate online!”

Ron is married to Sue, an Office Manager and they have two adult children. They have travelled extensively, including six months touring USA in a 19 foot campervan. Ron reckons his next book should be called: ‘19 feet was not enough!’ They managed to survive that 'close encounter’ and enjoy visiting new countries.

Ron is a mad keen sportsman having played rugby, cricket, tennis, skiing and golf but only the golf remains. His favourite sport was cricket which he played for over 40 years. Ron still misses trundling down those left arm slows (he reckons he actually got one to turn in 1983 but no one has been able to substantiate that claim). This love of the sport led to Ron getting involved in cricket administration at an early age. That eventually resulted in Ron being elected to the inaugural Board of Control of the Auckland Cricket Association – a big achievement for a delegate from a second tier club, as East Coast Bays was in those days.

Ron has a wide range of other interests including theatre, reading, movies, hiking, travel, food & wine - all the good stuff!

Obviously Ron still loves his troutfishing and he continues to pursue this absorbing pastime - but not as often as he would wish. Ron still remembers when he travelled around New Zealand fishing all the best rivers and claiming it as ‘research’ for his books - those were the days ………..

Testimonials:

"I'd heard good things about Zeald from a number of our clients - so I was expecting good things. I wasn't disappointed. Our E-business Consultant, Ron Giles, got things off to a great start. Ron was very good, very professional and he explained things well.

In the early stages Zeald provided us with a well laid out plan to get the ball rolling. That document was excellent, allowing us to complete a very comprehensive review of our needs and expectations. We are a unique organisation and it was pleasing to discover that Zeald had the capacity to connect with us at our level and focus on the areas that are important for our business.

We're very happy with our Zeald website. We've already noticed that we're getting a lot more contact from users and more online bookings than we've ever had. It's been a great result.”

Murray Ashcroft
Manager
ASB Stadium

“Zeald comes very highly recommended! From the moment I went into the Zeald seminar, and all the way through the Website Plan with Ron Giles to my website launch, everything has been great. I can't say enough about Zeald! Even before my site went live I was telling people about them because I knew already, just from seeing what they have done for us, how many people out there really need website help!


Thank you Zeald, you have provided an absolute education into the world of website marketing!”


Alan Gilder
Manager
All Seasons Pet Resort
 
"Ron Giles from Zeald undertook an audit of our e-commerce website. We were very impressed with the results, which showed the strengths and weaknesses of our current site, as well as ways and means to improve its efficiency, marketability, and overall benefit to our business. A lot of the information was shared freely and we learned a great deal about how to take our website to the next stage. I recommend that more web business owners work with Ron Giles & the Zeald team if they want to improve their website business".

Neil Cruickshank
maorimusic.com

Contact Me:

P. 0274 777 753

E. ron.giles@zeald.com