President's Post - December 2024
For the final time in 2024, I am sharing my perspective of our industry. The NZSDA have been busy the last few months, completing our goal to travel to as many regions as possible to meet members. The final visits for the year were to Tauranga, Taupo and Rotorua. Thanks to those that took the time to meet Mikayla and share your thoughts with her. It has been great getting to meet so many members this year, and I just want to say thank you to everyone who made the time to come through to our regional meetings. Thank you also to our guest speakers and to our special family of sponsors, as well as our board members who made themselves available to answer any questions that members had face to face. We could not do this without you. Thank you.
Earlier this month we held our annual strategic planning meeting, where we took a day out of our normal activities to discuss and evaluate how our last 12 months have gone, what we accomplished compared to our goals, and what we want to achieve for the next 12 months. I am very happy with the direction we are taking, as a board to the industry. The feedback we have received at events seems to support our change of direction. We have had new members join our board during the year, and the contribution they have made already has just been outstanding. Thank you, team.
It was great to see that we had completed a lot of what we had set out to. Melissa and Mikayla have been very proactive and have done an excellent job completing what we planned to achieve. Examples of what we have done include rebuilding our website, releasing the pay guide for our industry, the best practice guide, made Signee information available to all members, re-worked and paved the way for as many companies to look at their businesses and involvement within our industry as a whole, and revised Master Sign Maker accreditation, with many other things going on behind the scenes. As mentioned earlier, we have been all over the country to meet as many members as possible, and we have had an increase in membership numbers, this during probably the hardest trading year a lot of us would ever have worked through. It is so exciting to receive new member applications, there is so much talent and enthusiasm around New Zealand in our industry.
As I write this, there is less than two weeks to go before we close our doors for 3 weeks, give my team a decent break away from the madness of signage manufacturing and ever changing deadlines. Personally, I am going to take my car for its last big road trip from Auckland to Queenstown and back before I put her in semi-retirement (written with a wee tear in my eye). I am spending Christmas in Melbourne with family, before going camping for 2 weeks in one of my favorite places in New Zealand, Bannockburn. While I do love this industry, to be honest, the only signage that I want to see for the next 3 weeks are signs that say, ‘Fresh Cherries’, ‘Pick your own Apricots’, or the most important ones, that say ‘wine tasting’.
I want to wish everyone a happy and safe festive season, I hope everyone is getting away from the office and spending time out there in this amazing little country we all call home. I look forward to meeting as many people again in 2025.
Until next time,
Shae Goom
NZSDA President
