Nineteen years ago we imported the first Segway Personal Transporters (PTs) into New Zealand. In fact, our very first two units were probably the first to reach the Southern Hemisphere. They arrived in September 2003.
Back then the device itself was called the Segway 'Human Transporter' (or HT), and our fledgling business was called Segway Hire - we were just beginning to work out the things we could do with these amazing machines....and we only had two!
Six weeks later we were exhibiting at Big Boys Toys. To open the show, the mayor at the time (John Banks) arrived by helicopter, jumped onto one of our Segways and zoomed forward to cut the ribbon with oversized scissors - all in front of the media. The Sunday Star Times ran a great photo (see below).*
Across three days at Big Boys Toys we gave hundreds of rides and handed out thousands of our very first, very simple little Flyer. It was produced in-house on a Mac using ClarisWorks, printed six-up on a Black & White 300dpi laser printer, and guillotined by hand. Within a couple of months we'd have an altogether more professional Flyer to hand out to the public.
We found a worn copy of this ancient brochure buried deep inside a box just the other day...
And here's the rear:
And here's John Banks opening Big Boys Toys in 2003:
* Such a shame John Banks was real dick a few years later about our Segway PT trial with Auckland Council. It was all going so well. We were on track to save Council hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by deploying Segway PTs across a number of roles. For examples, some building inspections being undertaken in the CBD could be done by council staff arriving on Segway PTs, instead of taking cars out of the numerically large yet finite pool of council vehicles only to have their journey impacted by congestion followed by the inability to find a car park at or even near their destination upon arrival; various roles in the Parks Department; plus improved productivity in the parking enforcement department (admittedly, this was never going to be popular benefit in the eyes of the public). Yes, it was going so well until the day John Banks claimed to The Herald the trial was "silly" - and the only place Segway PTs belonged was down at the local skate park! Sigh. Changing the world is hard. It didn't seem to matter to John Banks that the 6 week trial had been determined a spectacular success and efficiency boost at all levels by council staff, nor that (according to our sources within council at the time) Banks was later forced to personally apologised to the parking enforcement officers that he'd offered by publicly branding them as "lazy" for trialling and considering this revolutionary concept of what we now call micro-mobility. By then, the damage had already been done. Even Herald commentator Brian Rudman's unhelpful opinions at the time were incredibly lame.** At least private enterprise, including Auckland's Heart of the City, Sal's Pizza deliveries and James Law Reality, recognised the efficiency gains to be had - and promptly adopted Segway PTs for use around the CBD with spectacular success. If a few Segway PTs had been deployed by Auckland Council in 2008 it is possible that by 2022 the ratepayer could have benefited to the tune of millions of dollars in savings in operational costs plus efficiency benefits.
** What was it about certain male columnists and media presenters (they were always male) in the mid-2000's, typically aged 50-ish to 60-ish? They liked to assert "...there's no way of avoiding the fact that they