what would you have done?
There are moments in business where the ground doesn’t just shift beneath your feet — it disappears entirely.
Imagine turning up to work one morning and discovering, the very same day it becomes public, that the company you work for has gone into liquidation. No warning. No soft landing. Just headlines, phone calls, and a knot in your stomach.
Now imagine discovering something else at the same time: that a number of schools had lost their deposits in the process. One of them had paid almost two‑thirds of the full price of a boat. All gone. Completely. In total, around 20 boats were affected.
So let us ask you — honestly — what would you have done?
Would you have walked away and looked for better opportunities? Would you have picked up the pieces and focused only on your own survival, carefully avoiding responsibility for mistakes that weren’t yours? Or would you have done something far less sensible, far less safe — and far more personal?
We chose the third option.
We decided to honour the agreements.
Every single one.
Loss is loss. Trust is trust.
Whether it was a small public school that had lost years of sausage sizzle fundraising money, or a private school where generous parents may have been better placed to cushion the fall — we didn’t differentiate. Loss is loss. Trust is trust.
Saving the moulds — and supporting the affected customers — became the single most powerful driving force behind everything we did next. This wasn’t about business strategy. It was about transforming what was left of a broken vehicle into something that could still create, still contribute, still make a difference.
We came to New Zealand with two suitcases. No family safety net. No friends to fall back on. Just the two of us — and Charlie the cat.
We had scraped together some savings from our years of employment, plus a small, scrappy side venture called Wicked Kayaks. And we poured all of it into setting up the new operation.
With zero experience, zero connections, and absolutely no roadmap through the turbulent world of New Zealand rowing, we had no idea what we were really stepping into.
What we did know was this: it wouldn’t be the first — or the last — time we bet everything on integrity, without a safety net, simply because it felt like the only right thing to do.
the very best we CAN at ANY moment
The biggest immediate challenge wasn’t building boats.
It was supply.
Our suppliers had also taken significant hits in the liquidation. They had lost money too. Staying loyal to them wasn’t the easiest path — but it was the only one that made sense to us.
On the production side, we felt steady. Lez had been the chief boat builder at KIRS from 2006 to 2015. Boats, materials, processes — that part we knew.
What we didn’t know was people.
We didn’t understand the clubs yet. We didn’t understand the school system — public versus private, committees, traditions, politics. We didn’t understand how decisions were made, or how fragile institutional memory could be.
So we defaulted to something simple.
We treated every single customer exactly the same.
Same standards. Same care. Same honesty. Same effort.
We gave the very best we were capable of at that moment — and we shared our love for the sport equally, without calculating what might come back in return.
was it worth it?
We are often asked that question.
Surely, people say, the customers you helped stayed loyal? Surely that goodwill must have come back to you in equal measure?
The honest answer?
Not always.
And that’s due to two simple truths we learned along the way.
First: humans are complex.
Second: the average living memory of a school committee is about four years.
Most committees rely heavily on one key individual. When that person moves on, knowledge doesn’t always follow. Positions change. Priorities shift. Context disappears.
Good deeds fade.
Bad intent — or gossip — tends to linger.
And yet.
Here’s the part that matters most.
Karma exists.
We don’t mean that romantically, or naively. We mean it in the quiet, long‑arc sense. We never regretted being generous with our time, energy, or resources. Sometimes the return didn’t come from the same place we gave it to — but on a broader scale, it always came.
Some of the schools we helped chose a different supplier the next time around.
Others gave us something far more valuable than repeat business: lifelong friendships.
What we learned is this.
We focus on what we contribute.
We don’t judge what the recipient decides to give back.
We can only control what we can control — and for us, that has always meant giving generously from whatever we have at the time.
We chose to embrace this community with an open heart. To focus on what we can do — not on what others might do to us.
And that decision, more than any mould, material, or machine, became the foundation of everything that followed.
Year after year, the shed got a little busier — built on the confidence others placed in our work, and in the decisions we made.
And that’s why we’re still here — for the rigging and grinning.
— The Laszloz
Sometimes the return didn’t come from the same place we gave it to — but on a broader scale, it always came.
