Little bit about our founder.
Kia Ora x
My name is Te Miringa Parkes and I am the founder of GLOWNZ. He uri teenei no Ngati Hinearo, Ngati Tuera, Nga Paerangi hoki. It all started one afternoon when I really wanted a ring light but knew it wasn’t worth the hundreds of dollars for a couple of uses. I did however have an idea to break-even and make my purchase worth while… and that’s when the idea to hire out the Ring Light kit as a digital photo booth came about as I saw others doing the same thing!
My initial idea was to partner with a dress rental company and get them to hire the light out on my behalf and they would just get a commission. I emailed at least 10 dress rental businesses and only one was really interested. We meet up, took some photos, and was about to sign the contract when the dress rental business pulled out on me, leaving me with a newly purchased ring light and hundreds of dollars gone that I barely had in the first place hahaha but it was fine I just had to think and pivot.
I actually think this was a blessing in disguise and god opening up the door for me to enter into the business world. I study a BA / BCom at the University of Auckland and was pursuing a career in business and entrepreneurship but was scared just like everyone else to jump straight in haha so GLOWNZ was my foot in the door to experience and learn first hand what it takes to start, run, and grow a small business.
So back to GLOWNZ… After the dress rental business fell through I knew my only option was to start a business and give it a go. And that’s what I done. (continued below)
I went straight into researching who else was out there offering a digital photo booth, what were their pro’s and con’s, what could we do differently, how much they were charging and formulated our offering.
I built our first website myself, crafted out first giveaway which was worth over $2K yet only got about 100 entries (talk about learning hahaha), organized our first events and was super excited for launch. We launched July 7th 2019. How did we go? Terrible hahaha we didn’t make any sales within out first 6 months of operating. I learnt very quickly that people don’t just want a digital photo booth but they want packages with balloon garlands, backdrops, signage etc. It was around October when we decided to offer balloon garlands and YAY we got our first sale! I was over the moon!! Super nervous, grateful, excited, scared hahaha but we got through it! After this we started to get a couple more events by the end of the year and were able to expand into signage and backdrops.
Come to 2020 we were booked through out the entire February, March, and April of 2020! I was so proud of pushing through and making it work. But then what happened… Covid happened. The entire events industry crashed in seconds. All events from mid march onwards were cancelled and postponed. Just when I felt like we were moving forward we were pushed back 3x. Not to worry we are grateful to be safe, healthy, and happy.
A year and a bit later, who knew i would be here now with 3 branches and running a family business with my sister running Dunedin, myself running Auckland, and some family friends running Whanganui/Palmerston North.
Hopefully you got to get to know me and glownz’s journey a little better. I am forever grateful for our amazing clients who have been just so incredibly amazing to work with. Can not thank you guys enough xx
Love, Te Miringa xx