Segway New Zealand has been awarded Best Sales Innovation award at the 2019 Segway APAC Distributors Conference held this week in Thailand.

We have engaged numerous innovative approaches to promoting the Segway-Ninebot brand and product line during this past year. Segway New Zealand has received numerous awards over the last decade, including Best Performance (2009), Sales Excellence (2017), and Best Sales Innovation Partner (2018).

In fact, we've been doing world-first's and regional-first's right since launching our business in 2003 when we imported the first 'Segway Human Transporters' to the Southern Hemisphere. For example, here is our very first promotional flyer, where we partnered with NZ's #1 energy drink 'V' in 2003-4. Beginning that summer we collaborated with V for several years across a wide range of V-sponsored outdoor events all around New Zealand. These included outdoor rock concerts, dance parties and family-centric film screenings on giant inflatable outdoor screens in parks at dusk.

It was a time when two major brands were vying for energy drink market dominance. V was said to rule the consumption of energy drinks by day (offering an afternoon pick-me-up to "vitalise" drinkers), while Red Bull ruled the night with an air of dance music inspired sophistication (think 'Red Bull and Vodka'). In other countries Red Bull also had a strong daytime and sports association, but struggled to replicate that in New Zealand (despite distinctively branded Mini vehicles and promo staff having high visibility at outdoor events). V was developed by local company Frucor and their well-funded marketing department was populated with particularly innovative individuals excited to be driving sales of a product that was in a high-growth phase. What was interesting was how these two brands arose rapidly - seemingly from nowhere - to dominate an entirely new market category (energy drinks). Their success saw competitors both big and small flock to the segment. Industry giant Coca-Cola threw a lot of money at establishing their own energy drink called 'Burn' but it failed to ignite in the New Zealand scene. Several years later Coca-Cola launched 'Mother' and carved out a space with branding that had a "Westie" vibe, while pushing "Lift" in a more gentle way. Meanwhile smaller competitors Black Dog (#2 in Europe), Angel and others tried hard to grab a slice of the market but achieved no lasting success. At one point there were even caffeine infused lollipops for sale at nightclubs and dance parties.