Tim Alpe of JUCY was named the New Zealand Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year for 2010 at a glittering award ceremony at the Langham Hotel Auckland, Thursday 21st October. Tim will represent New Zealand at the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards in Monte Carlo in May 2011.
"We’ve made it our business to celebrate entrepreneurs in New Zealand and around the world,” says Hooper. “The Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards is a unique opportunity to acknowledge these people and to recognise their contributions to society.”
“So far the finalists have been competing for the title of NZ’s top entrepreneur. Tim Alpe is a deserving winner for this prestigious title. Now the competition goes global as Tim competes alongside 42 of the world’s best entrepreneurs at the World Entrepreneur Of The Year in Monte Carlo. Having been at the world event for 3 years I can tell you that will be an incredibly exciting and rewarding time for Tim," says Hooper.
Tim Alpe, JUCY
'A Luscious Tourism Offering'
From the outset, Tim Alpe wanted to create a business model and approach that would put the squeeze on existing players.
As he says: “From Day One I wanted to create a business that was next generation and in the process develop a tourism brand not just a tourism business.” His idea was to create the first tourist-focussed vehicle hire company to embrace next generation technology to enable travellers to plan, price and book low-cost travel deals.
Tim had dusted his commercial and tourist sector skills working for New Zealand’s largest tourism company Tourism Holding Limited (THL). Starting as a camper van cleaner while at university, he quickly moved up the pecking order to become the youngest GM of one of the company’s companies—Airbus. At the time he took the wheel of the enterprise it was financially haemorrhaging. With Tim Alpe at the helm, new life and fiscal vitality came into the operation.
Tim and brother Dan decided to pursue their idea and, on a less than auspicious day—the day after 9/11/2001—they set up what was initially called Ezy Rentals from a small office in Auckland. Their fleet consisted of 35 Daewoo Lanos that they purchased from Auckland Hospital Board using money borrowed from their dad. Overtime they expanded locations around New Zealand and increased their fleet. “We learned early on that we needed to adopt a ‘street hustler’ attitude and that all phone calls and emails meant business.”
Though Ezy was expanding the brothers felt their existing branding was functional but not ‘funky’ enough to provide any point of differentiation to the competition. In 2007 they created their JUCY offering and the launch of their brand mascot—a very alluring character known as JUCY Lucy.
JUCY now has over 2,000 vehicles on the road and offices throughout New Zealand and Australia. The brand also encompasses the first JUCY Hotel in Auckland as well as JUCY by Design where the company’s camper vans are custom built.
