Can you tell us a bit about your career journey since graduating?
While I was in my final year at UC I made a short film called Deluxe. It was selected for a film festival in Italy and won a number of awards in a festival Wellington. This film gave me a foot in the door to my first job at the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. It was ranked one of the top in the world at the time, so it was like stepping straight into New York.
My career has definitely been more of an adventure than a pathway… including art projects, entrepreneurial ventures and advertising. At the age of 24, I left Saatchis and set up an art group called Spungo with my friend from UC, Jamie Kirk. Spungo pioneered new forms of media in the public realm, pre-dating things like flash mobs and social media.
After Spungo wrote and published a novel called Beop! Beop are a band in a time bubble performing on an array of instruments from another dimension. In 2015 we created a portal, like hi-tech band rotunda, and transmogrified Beop into the 21st Century — the show was the headline act the inaugural Cuba Dupa festival in Wellington.
All the projects are inevitably connected. In fact, the name Big Street originates from the novel Beop! The story is set in a place called Big Street, an allegory for the bustling big streets of the world. Every city has its big street.
Where did the seed for Big Street Bikers come from?
The spark came in 2015 on a trip to India, but not in the expected way people get inspired in India. I was an Advertising Creative Director and the Ford Motor Company was one of the clients I’d make global brand campaigns for. On one project I was in Delhi and the brief was to create a campaign that would ‘sell a car every minute across India’. That evening when we left the marbled luxury of the hotel to go to dinner in a taxi, I was struck by the insanity of what we were being asked to do… the journey which was no more than a 5km bike ride down the road took two hours. Selling more cars was fundamentally flawed, I imagined Henry Ford even rolling in his grave given his mission was to democratize freedom of mobility. Jump forward 12 months and I’d left the advertising industry and my friend, and now business partner, Matt Weavers lent me his e-bike. It changed my life and all I wanted to do was bike the big streets.
The fact that Kiwis spend an average of 20 days a year stuck in traffic is pretty confronting! What’s the mission you and the team are working towards?
We call it the Big Switch — it’s all about enabling more people to ride more often — by making e-biking more affordable, accessible, and cool. Most car trips are under 5km, so switching to biking is an easy win for saving cash on petrol, reducing emissions, and having a better buzz. E-biking has become a global phenomenon, outselling EVs ten to one.
Where do you hope Big Street Bikers will be in the next 5 years?
On the big streets in the cities of Aotearoa and the world.
Looking back at your time at UC, what memories or experiences have stayed with you?
Chris Knox playing at the Stein, putting my clothes over pyjamas because it’s too cold in the morning, drama workshops at the Free Theatre in the Arts Centre.
