Our treasured whakataukï ‘He aha te mea nui o tēnei ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata’ really resonates when I consider the numerous triumphs and challenges achieved by our business clients. It is the opportunity to work alongside our clients, contracted business mentors, and industry partners which has made this entire journey for the MBFS team meaningful and worthwhile.

We have so far engaged with an estimated 8000 Māori business men and women, who were either at the business start-up phase or already trading and were looking to expand their operations.

The MBFS team has assisted entrepreneurs to take their business aspirations from dreams to reality. It has also been our privilege to support existing business-owners to take their local products and services into the domestic market and beyond to the international market. We have also seen individual business owners come together to form a business network collective which supports their local economy.

The MBFS journey, however, does not end here and every day we continue to strive for improvements that will assist our clients to achieve their goals in business.

As part of our commitment to our clients, we have enhanced our service delivery model to ensure that we are better able to accurately assess and support them in their areas of need. With our team spread across the country, we are equipped with highly skilled staff who have local business knowledge with access to regional business intelligence through our contracted business mentors. The MBFS has the additional focus of assisting an increasing number of Māori business owners with their “readiness” for export including Māori tourism operators with export product. In a future issue of Kōkiri magazine we will feature MBFS clients who are taking their products and services off shore.

In this edition of Pakihi we feature MBFS clients, Mark Whitecliffe of MSO Design and Peter Duncan of The Wedding Guy. They share with us their stories on how they became successful Māori business entrepreneurs. I invite you to read their stories which will hopefully inspire you to consider taking your own path towards being a successful Māori business entrepreneur.