INDUSTRY PEOPLE
BEATING THE COMPETITION
The Beattys Story
“That’s when we bought our first balancer and it has grown
A wee while back, Johnathan Brodie took off his work boots
from there. Now at Beattys we have the equipment and
and firmly stepped inside his hypothetical clients’ for a day.
expertise to balance rotating equipment up to 10-tonnes at
He wondered what it must be like to run a business that
up to 5,000rpm. Then we got into distributing
relied heavily on avoidance of downtime, and
a need for quick efficient service, with a touch “I came in at about 1978. and importing. I came in at about 1978. Too
Too dumb to do anything dumb to do anything else,” he laughs.
of innovation.
else!”
This is typical modesty from Johnathan and
He realised that it was the only guaranteed way
indeed the team. They are anything but dumb.
to truly understand what his clients needed.
If anything they present a fresh outlook on the world of driveline
From there, Beattys, a large driveline technology specialist
technology, having marketed and developed branding across
in Wiri, Auckland, developed a core philosophy around the
the range of individual products and specialist services they
customer.
supply and provide.
“Basically, we learned to put the client before any other
Apart from the basic driveline supply and repair facility they
consideration, as they know what they need best. Our
offer, Beattys also is now moving into exciting new directions.
clients are our most important asset”, he says.
Everything is either getting an overhaul, or new technologies
Beattys is, in essence, a family business. Johnathan is a
and systems are being rolled out.
second-generation member of staff and his son Hamish, who
is also the company sales manager, is the third generation.
Johnathan’s father set up the business in 1963 in the
tried-and true Kiwi manner: small-scale, with specialists in
engineering and welding. Over time, they realised they’d
need to specialise further, moving away from general
engineering.
The Turret Onboard Energy system in action.
Carlos Prestidge is the recently-recruited Marketing
Manager (he joined last year) and is slowly and surely taking
the company into the world of social media.
“We’re doing more on LinkedIn and Facebook but having
said that, it’s just one part of the overall business plan, and
it makes us easier to find online.”
Beattys prides itself in being able to solve problems with
driveline componentry.
This is a monthly series on businesses in our industry. We profile one business per month to find out how our hard-working
business owners, employees and contractors manage to run these specialist businesses and what makes them tick in the
New Zealand trade business environment. These are the stories of our CAM people.
w w w. c a m m a g a z i n e . c o . n z
CAM August 2019
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