NZ Post hires Grant Samuel to help raise Localist expansion capital
"Please stop blowing our taxpayer money on this NZ Post."
Featured comment(BusinessDesk) New Zealand Post Group, which runs the state-owned postal service, has hired Grant Samuel & Associates to advise on finding an investment partner to assist with the expansion of its Localist deals and events website.
The amount to be raised is commercially sensitive, NZ Post external relations manager John Tulloch says. The process is expected to take three to four months.
Localist is a digital platform "that lets consumers discover and share the best things to taste, buy and do around where they live", a statement says. It was launched in early 2011 and has grown strongly in the Auckland market.
"Having tested and proven its digital subscription business model in Auckland, Localist is now seeking to expand its geographic footprint, and will be announcing an enhanced range of digital products to the market shortly.
NZ Post "is seeking to attract one or more shareholders to help accelerate the growth of this digital asset," it says.
In August, NZ Post reported a 38% jump in underlying earnings on record profit at its KiwiBank unit, while postal revenues continued their declining trend.
The postal service has been exploring ways to drive earnings growth against the slide in core letter delivery services.
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Comments and questions15
Please stop blowing our taxpayer money on this NZ Post.
And investors - there are plenty of other much better internet businesses out there.
There go those pretend business men again thinking they have a real business under the flawed (as far as the average kiwi is concerned) SOE model... for god's sake stick to your knitting., delivering letters and parcels and stop trying to compete against the likes of Google etc, this can only be a train wreck.
NZ Post's latest hike in postage rates must have prompted many, like me, to send all accounts and statements on line. The savings in postage alone has more than covered the charges by Xero.
Being a dinosaur myself I can understand their frustration as to what has become of their business, but this has a train wreck feel to it.
Why, for the love of God, is the state entering into online deals and events promotion?
Do we really need a govt run Groupon to tell us where the coffee is cheapest?
NZ Post would be better off hiring Kroda Metha, to close it down. What on earth is an SOE doing taking venture capital risk outside its area of core competency? (as Sam Morgan would say). Who is the shareholding minister for this entity? The current Board better hope it's someone more lenient than Judith Collins...
Already blown over $10m of tax payers money on a venture that doesn't work.... surely mgmt are smart enough to know when the goose is cooked.
Agree with all comments - as per usual NZ Post have misse the boat and is floundering with old world thinking!
Google & Yellow.co.nz works well enough, we dont need another biz directory online, especially one that can't pay for its own existence ..
and extra especially one that is open to manipulation through comments and reviews etc .. let it fail .. get govt out of the way,let real business come through
NZ Post have sunk over 32mil into this and still there is no return in sight, enough is enough. The main issues lies with having a weak board and an even weaker CEO with no experience running a business. Why isn't the "succesful business woman" Domecq putting her money where her mouth is?
How much money has the NZ tax-payer put into the Localist?
Why does NZ Post refuse to disclose this information?
If it has 'grown strongly' in the Auckland market then why not share some financial data together with the tax-payer money used to launch the Localist?
The NZ tax-payer deserves to know this information!
10mln spent on starting up in Auckland.... May as well have paid each Aucklander $10 to use it....
It's a lot more than $10 million that NZPost have already wasted on Localist. It's beyond me that a government owned company like NZ Post is allowed to waste taxpayer money trying to compete with Google and Facebook which is also about to launch a search engine.
Any potential investor with half a brain looking at this would realize that investing in this would be like throwing money down the drain.
If you look at the reviews on Localist 80% of the reviews are written by stuff members and the rest are written by people who Localist pays for writing reviews. Clearly all the reviews are biased and can't be trusted.
NZ Post is spending taxpayer money to pay people to write reviews. Surely there are much better businesses that NZ Post can invest the taxpayer money in.
I doubt anyone would invest money in this business if they do their due diligence they will find that the business has been in decline and many of the products have not worked. The work environment is one of the worst I have ever worked in and people are constantly leaving, the only people who stay are contractors. In my first week three people were leaving and I found out that most of the people I work with were looking for jobs. Its a very sad state and I cannot understand why NZ post do nothing about it.
"has grown strongly in the Auckland market"
All that growth has been coming from NZ Post spending millions of taxpayers' money on Google AdWords and offline advertising. If they stop the advertising in Google then the traffic will drop significantly.
NZ Post spending taxpayer money to compete with Google, Facebook etc is simply a waste.
Clearly the only winner in this is Google and NZ Post needs to stop wasting the taxpayers' money on this.
Why are staff and advertisers doing all the ratings and reviews?