Many a business has started out from someone’s home, but only a few make the transition to town. However, that’s what has happened to Pamela Tindall and Jan Little, who have moved their business Cookware Essentials to a smart new shop in Kuripuni Village.
“It’s been steady progress for us since the word go”, says Pam who started the business online with Jan 18 months ago. “The online store was expanding at such a rate that we outgrew our home. We knew the next logical step was to run a retail store along with our online business at the same premises. Now people are coming to us and saying “at last we don’t have to go over the hill to buy cookware.”
Cookware Essentials specialises in cookware, tools, gadgets, books and accessories, some of which are imported from Australia, the United States and Germany - everything from cookie/speculaa moulds to top end pasta machines and knives.
A self-confessed foodie and design aficionado, Pam had noticed that all the great cookware she saw in Australia “took about a year to arrive in New Zealand. So I thought, ‘why don’t we source these things ourselves?’”
The pair set up an e-commerce website and orders started flowing in from New Zealand and overseas, which they filled from Pam’s home in Masterton. Jan deals mainly with online orders and accounts while Pam now runs the shop and sources new product.
The business has been riding the wave of enthusiasm for home cooking which Pam sees as linked to the return to gardening and peoples’ wish to return to traditional cooking methods - home preserves, homemade pasta etc. As mothers, they also wanted to offer items to encourage parents to have their children learn to cook. Their range includes some very cute children’s cooking sets: “Our clientele ranges from children learning to cook, to the professional chef and restaurateur”.
Cookware Essentials recently supplied 25 salt and pepper grinders to a Pacific rim restaurant in Russell. They met David Borman, the developer who has transformed Kuripuni, through supplying items to his restaurant, The Countryman. “He said that the Wairarapa was in dire need for a cookware store and asked us whether we were interested in opening a shop at Kuripuni,” says Pam.
Customers are enthused about the fast and efficient service they provide, and great customer service is vitally important to Pam and Jan: “We get a real buzz from doing the research and sourcing exactly what people need.”
One customer had been searching for weeks for a gadget that de-seeds and peels bulk tomatoes. She is now the proud owner of a Sauce Master, thanks to Cookware Essentials. Another of their favourite discoveries is the ‘cataplana’, a traditional Spanish copper pot for cooking seafood that opens like a clamshell, creating maximum impact at the dinner table.
And though Pam and Jan may have fond memories about starting out small, it’s unlikely they’ll shed too many tears for the garage. In this case, bigger is definitely better!
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
