Rose & Thorne Boosted With Entrepreneurs’ Challenge Award

For Immediate Release

Rose & Thorne Boosted With Entrepreneurs’ Challenge Award

Rose & Thorne has triumphed at the 2013 Entrepreneurs’ Challenge beating off 57 applicants to share the prestigious win in the final round with EcoStock.

The New Zealand lingerie company convinced the ‘Dragons Den’ of judges that it has the right combination of leadership, innovation, governance, persistence and international expansion potential to rightly deserve its share of the $1m in growth funding.

The prestigious annual event that has been running since 2009 started with a generous three-million-dollar foundation gift from New Zealand businessman Charles Bidwill and brings together the best of emerging business brains.

Rose & Thorne’s success has been based on the spirit of “community” and now comes full circle according to co-founder and CEO, Stefan Preston.

He says “Rose & Thorne started out as a ‘community’ of ex-Bendon employees who were made redundant when that company relocated to Australia. In the business community, Rose & Thorne is grateful for the support we’ve had from our main retailer The Warehouse and the growing community of customer advocates that we are building. When you are a small company you are very reliant on people getting behind you and now it’s really pleasing to share in this award which will help us along on our journey.”

Philanthropist Charles Bidwill who provided the initial seed funding for the awards was a previous owner of Bendon which makes the award even more gratifying for the Auckland based company.

In announcing the two winners at the Business School, Sir John Logan Campbell Executive-in-Residence and chairman of the investment committee Greg Cross says “New Zealand needs to be creative, adaptable and diverse, and the back stories to each of this year’s two winners reflects this perfectly.”

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