Gary Van Der Geest Is a NZ entrepreneur who set up and is now the Company Director of a major signage development company known as MAG assembly. This is the largest signage company in NZ and one of the largest signage companies in Australasia.

 

Gary went to school at St. Patrick’s high school in Timaru. At school he loved sport especially rugby and sailing. By his own admission Gary admits that he didn’t study to the best of his ability whilst at school.

 

Gary then joined the Navy in 1982 as a machine engineer, to learn about ships and machinery; he was in the navy for 7 years and became a chief apprentice. Whilst in the navy Gary and some of his friends went off to do an NZCE course in Wellington. This was his foot in the door to securing a meaningful job outside the navy. On leaving the navy Gary secured a position with Nissan cars, this involved lots of travel and he would frequently visit Japan to look at all of the new cars. On leaving Nissan, Gary then went into the world of bathroom design, designing shower doors and other bathroom features. It was here that Gary was able to combine his artistic design flair with his engineering background. Gary helped to make the place more productive, he made the business more efficient by using his time study from Japan. The company was making 120 doors a day; with Gary’s new plan in place he raised productivity to 260 doors a day. Because of Gary's time study the designs new packaging systems were very effective. The design was easily automated which in turn led to Gary making himself redundant as the business no longer needed his services, due to Gary’s ingenuity the company saved $9 million.

 

Gary then spent a short time working for himself before joining IMI Cornelius. The company had lots of factories and was a worldwide business. Gary worked there for 3 years as an engineering manager. MAG assembly was then started because IMI shut down; this resulted in Gary losing his job. Fortunately for Gary he was approached by a NZ towel dispensing company with a profit of over 14 million dollars a year. This however, got Gary thinking and after doing some sums of his own decided to set up his own company. Initially starting with 1000 lotto stands put together with internal frames. After doing some in depth research that explored ways to build a light box he set up MAG his own company. MAG started getting bigger and bigger, the company benefited greatly from a huge Shell contract, the largest signage contract in New Zealand’s history. After pulling off such a lucrative contract Mag has grown and developed making MAG assembly the largest signage company in New Zealand and one of the largest in Australasia.

 

Gary through his sheer hard work, determination and most importantly attention to detail has managed to build up a highly successful and competitive signage company. Despite his earlier setbacks, redundancies and not the best of starts in life. Gary is now a successful and inspiring businessman.