Big operation began as teen's workshop in Gore

• Published date: 06 November 2021

He was 19 when he rented space and opened a vehicle workshop in Gore, hiring a qualified mechanic who was 10 years older than him. In an ironic twist, he — the boss — served his apprenticeship under his employee.

Now, at 32 and living with his family near Dunedin, he is at the helm of HVS Motors which has grown to become one of the largest import sales companies in New Zealand.

The business was fourth in Deloitte's Master of Growth index with 546% revenue growth over the past five years, and 37th on the Deloitte Fast 50 index. It was also the fastest-growing retail and consumer products business for Dunedin and the lower South Island.

The story of HVS Motors is extraordinary.

Its beginnings are in Gore, where Mr Gardyne grew up on a sheep and cropping farm and attended Gore High School.

At school, he did the Gateway course which provided pupils access to workplace learning. It was an opportunity to ''wag a day a week'' and spend time in a workshop in town.

He left school after year 12 and went farming for two and-half years — ''I'm meant to be a farmer really'' — before deciding to start his own workshop.

He ran it for a few years and it ''went all right''. But he needed time to grow up and become an adult and ''learn some things about life''; he had made some mistakes and learned from them, he recalled.

Mr Gardyne started doing some vehicle trading, initially in Gore, and made some contacts in the importing industry.

Selling the vehicles was not that complex — the biggest barrier was getting them ready to sell and being able to deliver them; HVS Motors kept building its own solutions to that, he said.

In 2017, the business started the year with a three-year strategy but achieved all those goals in one year. It was ''chaos'' and coincided with the arrival of Mr Gardyne and wife Kaye's first child.

The business started that year with seven staff, a workshop and a branch in Gore. It ended it with three branches, plus a compliance centre and paint shop in Timaru, and 40 staff.

''That was quite wild, I'm not entirely sure how that happened. It was pretty reckless growth,'' he said.

A hailstorm in Timaru in 2019 saw 180 cars ''written off'' but, three days later, he opened an assessment centre for AA and Vero, working with both organisations, and hired 30 extra people to manage their way through that.

There were now 45 staff based in Timaru and what had previously been a derelict factory was now a hive of activity...