Latest / Best of Business / Simon Thwaites: Silvermoon owner on repurchasing the business, plans to open new stores in Christchurch

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Simon Thwaites: Silvermoon owner on repurchasing the business, plans to open new stores in Christchurch · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
• 0:12
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Full Circle story for your supermoon as in the jewelry
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: retailer founded in two thousand, sold in twenty seventeen, fell
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: into liquidation earlier this year into Simon Thwaite. He's gone
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: and bought the thing. What's significant about that? He was
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: the founder and he's with the Simon Morning to you Morning, Mike. Emotional,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: the emotional what do I call it?
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: I think you said supermoon, which sounds good.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I got no, No, I said silver moon. No,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: there is a supermoon I could have. I mean, so anyway,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: my apologies if I did silver moon, I know, emotional
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: or business.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: A bit of both. When I heard it went into
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: into liquidation, that was fresh, said, do I think that? Yeah?
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: I think there's an opportunity there for sure.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: And so in starting it and then selling it and
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: then going into liquidation, is that a victim of the time,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: because twenty seventeen through now we all know what we've
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: been through. Is that a victim of the times? Or
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: was something done wrong without banging the person who ended
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: up in that predicament.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: It's hard for me to say from the outside, but
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: certainly we were successful. But times have been tough. I
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: mean you've had COVID and you've had cost of living crisis. Yeah,
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: it's been pretty grim. Yeah, hard to stay from the outside.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: And when and looking at what you've picked up, what
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: have you picked up in terms of, you know, how
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: doable it all is.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: We haven't picked up any stores. So we're very excited
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: about the website. They were doing well online and habits
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: have changed. People are shopping more online. We opened the
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: website yesterday. Tomorrow we do open our first store at
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: the Riverside Markets and Christine so we will have a
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: store presence, and then in November we opened at the
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Hornby Hub. So yeah, slowly.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: So you've got expect engine plans.
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  Speaker 3: We've got expansion plans, but it's going to be something
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: that we do organically, make sure that each stores of
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: profits sent everything's working and don't go too quick.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: So what are you? Are you a jeweler or an entrepreneur?
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  Speaker 3: We're both definitely not a jeweler, definitely an entrepreneur, businessman,
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: whatever you want to call me.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So what do you do once you sold Silver Moon,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: I became.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: A dirty old landlord. I went into commercial property, commercial property,
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: and look, it's it's it's good, it's fun, but it's
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: a dry compared to the retail and jewelry and all
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: the fund that's hopefully ahead.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Do you like jewelry? I mean, are you in it
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: for that?
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Love it? Yeah? Used to used to really enjoy the
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: product and the supplies, all the supplies that come back
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: on board. So we reached out to them and they said, yep,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: every every single quite You've got.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: A programmer and Karen Walker and those sort of lines,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: haven't you.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: By ranging Karen Walker sold and girl friends evolve, we
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: didn't get a single no. And obviously a couple of
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: them might have been mood, so it could have been
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: expecting a bit of a bad response, but that never happened.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: So Yeah, it took the plane.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Just explained it to us in a time of great
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: difficulty economically speaking, Why you would bother or is it
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: just that connection you had with it? Or do people
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: like you just do what you want to do no
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: matter what's going on.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: Oh look, I take some friend yesterday calling me a masochist,
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: So you could be right, Mike, Butler. We're coming from
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: a reasonably strong financial background. We think there's a very
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: low risk. Riverside Market opens tomorrow. We think that's a
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: hidden gem and costume. Yes, it's become a bit of
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: a focal point for tourists. We don't we can go
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: wrong in the here the Horby Hub. Again, that's a
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: growing area. I think Selwyn's the fastest growing area in
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: New Zealand. So I think if we can be clever
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: and we can execut on the website. So if the website,
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: if we can execute well and have zilders flocking to
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: that website, so I think we'll I could be proved wrong,
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: but hopefully we can't go wrong there.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Are You're we right? Good on you mate, appreciate it
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: very much. Simon Thwaites, I love people like that, silver Moon,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: the Founder, the seller, the savior.
• 4:29
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