London First

After 18 months, I finally stepped out in London yesterday.

The morning was spent with Michelle Templer, NZ Trade Commissioner to the UK and Ireland at NZ House in Haymarket. Jacqui and John Beer joined me and it was yet another great opportunity to introduce Pingar to NZTE during a market visit.

Of course, the UK is not a new market to me. Having spent the best part of 46 years domiciled in the country, it was more of a return to basics. Yet it is now important as part of the overall engagement strategy that NZTE remain a key focus of our offshore activity.

In the evening, it was dinner with a potential distributor of the Pingar platform to the Chinese language market. We plan to launch a Chinese language version of Pingar at DRUPA in May, so as a follow-up to the recent visit to Hong Kong, it could not have been better timed.

Between these two meetings, we found time to conclude the Pingar Board meeting. A number of key targets have been set and these will now set the tone for our product and market development strategy for the first quarter 2008.

There was time for a final visit of the day - to the 77 Wine Bar in West Hampstead. For some, it is an occasional drop in bar. For the best part of fifteen years however, it fulfilled a much greater role for me. It was here that I first met Jacqui. So time to reflect and time to remember.