Minister joins 1000 business owners at Wgtn Expo

Minister joins 1000 business owners at first Wellington Small Business Expo

Hundreds streamed into the TSB Bank Arena for the first day of the Wellington Small Business Expo. The expo is Wellington’s largest event for business with 2600 people already pre-registered for the three-day event.

Keynote speaker Minister for Small Business Hon Lianne Dalziel announced measures at the expo to make life easier for companies to start up business online. Businesses can now receive their company IRD number and register for GST online in just a few minutes with the Companies Office.

There are seven government organisations as well as 100 companies offering business support at the expo. “There is a high level of interest in the help being offered by government organisations exhibiting at the expo,” Small Business Expo organiser Sarah Trotman says. “People have come from far and wide to access the wealth of information available at this – the biggest event for business in New Zealand – and especially from The National Bank 40-speaker seminar series.”

Karleen Everitt, CEO of business consulting service Manaaki flew down from the Bay of Islands especially for the expo. “It offers such amazing value and opportunities for small business,” she says. “It’s great to connect with the exhibitors face-to-face and know you’re not isolated in your business. I really commend it to other businesses.”

Glenn Horrex, who made the trip for the expo from Wanganui, found the experience well worth the trip. He had two main reasons for coming to the expo - to discuss management systems with Paymark and to get information from the Ministry of Economic Development and the Statistics NZ sites.

Retail businessman Walter Cashell from Lower Hutt said the expo was excellent and the information on the exhibitor stands very useful for his business needs. “It was well worthwhile and I will be back tomorrow to talk to more people and to attend several of the free seminars.”

ENDS

Additional information:

The Small Business Expo runs in Wellington (18-20 July) and Christchurch (29-31 August) for the first time this year. Over 7500 business owners visited the Auckland event from 30 May-1 June.

The Wellington Small Business Expo opened at 9am-4pm Wednesday, 18 July and is open until 4pm Friday 20 July, with a late night to 8pm on Thursday,19 July.

Tickets for the Wellington expo cost $20 and are available at the door, or via the expo website www.businessexpo.co.nz, and include attendance to all three days of the expo, all exhibition halls, dedicated zones and The National Bank Seminar Series. Visit the website to book free appointments for the Vodafone Business Mentoring Zone.

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