Hunter McGregor speaker Tuesday 23rd July
A view of China from Shanghai
Information, also from the internet.
Mr. McGregor, his wife and their two young children have been back in his home turf of Otago this month, visiting family and enjoying a Kiwi holiday.
Brought up at Roxburgh - his parents (Sue [Alexandra Rotarian] and Bruce) had an orchard and founded Benger Gold juice and his father also managed Deer Improvement - he boarded at Otago Boys' High School before completing a marketing degree at the University of Otago.
After graduating, he headed overseas in 2001 and had never returned, apart from holidays. Initially, he headed to Perth where he worked for the Western Australian Meat Marketing Co-operative Ltd for several years. From there, he spent three and a-half years in Korea before moving to China in 2007.
China was now "home" for Mr McGregor and while he missed a lot of things including New Zealand food when he first arrived, the only thing he could not get in China now was custard squares. "Everything else I can get at a price," he said.
He enjoyed the lifestyles both countries afforded - "I sit in both camps" - and could "happily switch between the two".
When Hunter McGregor established a business in China four years ago, it was pioneering stuff.
Mr. McGregor runs a Shanghai-based venison importing and distribution business, working with specialist New Zealand venison producer Mountain River Venison.
There was no market for venison in China and so it had been about creating both interest and demand for the product - "because it doesn't sell itself".
What he has also found is that running a business in China is getting harder. And that, quite simply, was "because it's China". "It's the way things are," he said.
Describing himself as "hopeless" at languages, it took about two months before people could understand what he was saying but he had both the time and motivation to attend Mandarin classes. Residents of some Chinese cities speak Cantonese.
After working for the New Zealand Government at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, Mr. McGregor decided he did not want to continue teaching English - he wanted to get into business.
He did some consulting work for a few companies, including pioneering sheep milk venture Blue River Dairy. That was an interesting time and gave him an understanding of how things worked in China and what was needed to be successful there.
After working for one of the distributors of the sheep milk powder, the opportunity arose to work with Mountain River Venison.
He was responsible for sales and he had a small but growing team looking after the logistics. His company dealt directly with top hotels and restaurants China-wide, with most of its sales in Shanghai.
Chinese consumers were becoming more adventurous and the consumers he was targeting were increasingly well travelled and open to new experiences.
Later this year, Mr. McGregor had arranged for a group of China-based foreign chefs to visit deer farms in New Zealand while they were on holiday and New Zealand farmers were always open to visitors.
While it was getting more difficult to do business in China, that was nothing to do with the New Zealand-China relationship - it was "just how China is". And many of the issues and challenges were no different from anywhere else in the world, he believed.
Shanghai population about 27 million and Beijing population about 25 million. Residents of these cities have difficulty communicating with each other due to the different dialects.
