For "can do" everyday and professional kiwis, Norski supplies stores throughout New Zealand, products that both repair and create.
Norski was founded in the 1960's by Nelson North , originally based in Blenheim. Nelson was an industrial chemist who through tinkering and testing, created some interesting polyester and epoxy based products and eventually took them to market. The company was initially called ‘Norski Laboratories’ later changing our name to ‘Norski Holdings’ in 1980.
Nelson was friendly with some retailers of hardware products in Blenheim, and later in the wider South Island, who embraced the then small Norski range of products. It wasn’t too long before the word got out and saw a rapid increase in sales across a range of different retailers in the South Island such as boat chandlery and craft stores and sales continued to grow into the North Island all through the 80’s and 90’s.
It started out as Kayaks, some more colourful than others and developed into dinghy’s of all shapes and sizes along with various other products such as snow sleds and then slowly developing into more industrial items such as tanks and cages and it wasn’t long before there was an arsenal of products for display and sale. Even vehicles panels were manufactured for a period.
Eventually word got out and bigger and bigger boats were made, and work morphed into manufacturing such items as the dome for the local observatory.
Boat repairs were always a large part of the work undertaken and even some smaller boat jobs, however some boat repairs were rather substantial.
A lot of work was undertaken over the years for Department of Conservation with the design and building of hundreds of ‘Norski toilets’ and there are many of these still in use today.
Moving forward to the current day, Norski products are stocked to varying degrees by most popular hardware stores and many more outlets such as boating equipment stores, professional paint supply stores, craft shops and even a few online sales outlets.
Located in Plimmerton, a suburb of Wellington, Norski is still a family-owned and operated company and continues to flourish as more and more members of the public become aware that our products really are outstanding in both function and cost.
Together with our team, we blend products on a daily basis and ship to our customers (both distributors and end users) throughout the country.
Reid looks after the sales and gets to answer the phone some days when he’s been well behaved. Travelling widely up and down the country Reid is largely responsible for product positioning and answering customer queries. When he’s not ‘trying to stick the world back together with Norski products’ Reid likes to go fishing or bike riding.
Sandra looks after a bunch of customers who she’s built a great level of rapport with over the years. When Sandra isn’t calling on these customers she can be found running around the factory packing boxes or generally ‘getting on with running the place’ . Sandra also runs the coffee machine and fights off those that come near it with a big stick.
Julie is responsible for running Norski on a day to day basis, which can be quite treacherous with lots happening frequently. It could be said that Julie must have come from a circus background as she is very good at juggling! Without Julie life at Norski would come to a grinding halt as she is responsible for buying the ingredients we use and also invoicing, amongst a thousand other daily tasks.
