The Art of Living Well

A million miles away from the world of whiteware, Dot and Gary Paykel have time to paint, go fishing and grow their own veges.

Words: Sue Moody  Photographs: Kieren Scott

GARY PAYKEL IS NOT a man given to making snap decisions. The iconic New Zealand company that bears his father’s name – along with that of co-founder and uncle Sir Woolf Fisher – wouldn’t have achieved the market capitalization that it has today if Gary Paykel got his exercise by jumping to conclusions.

Nonetheless, it was a one-minute decision 14 years ago that has landed Gary and wife Dot in paradise. After years in a caravan and cottage at Teal Bay in the winterless north, the couple had decided to sell up and settle on something closer to Auckland for their precious holidays. Business commitments and international travel demands turned getting away from it all into a virtual art form. Then they were offered a 17-hectare property on a secluded north-facing bay around the corner from Russell. Fishing: great. Location: perfect. Right, we’ll buy it, said the F & P MD.

“It’s all a question of timing.” Always is, according to Gary who today, at 63, is the chairman of Fisher & Paykel Appliances and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, the two listed public companies created by division of the parent mega-company in 2001.

Under his stewardship Fisher & Paykel moved into the Australian market where it is now the most widely recognized whiteware brand. Son Andrew  is the New South Wales state manager, having cut his teeth in the United States. There the instructions when the company originally moved in were “Get an order book, get the Yellow Pages and get cracking to sign up the dealers!” That’s the New Zealand way of doing business, says Gary, and profitable American returns bear him out.

“It’s a very competitive world and our two companies can foot it with the best.” Significantly, he is also proud of what the companies return to the community through a raft of charitable trusts and the family-based ethos inherited from the founders. He’s proud too of having been on the Grant Dalton-helmed maxi-yacht Fisher & Paykel New Zealand for the 17-day Atlantic leg of the Whitbread Round The World Race in 1988.

Passionate New Zealanders? “On all our travels it never occurred to Dot or me to buy in Hawaii, Noosa or the Gold Coast. We knew this property had a very comfortable house and cottage and we thought one day we might rebuild on the site. We moved in time for Christmas 1990.”

Print

123next ›last »