Boxing clever

When Will Lau’s tech company hit the big-time in 2002, the thrill of success came with enormous pressure. Snapperfish, which sold email software for the early smartphone-like devices, topped $1 million in profit in just its second year, and peaked the next year with sales figures in the multiple millions of dollars. Years of working 100-hour weeks were taking its toll though, and tech-guru Will was losing the love.

“It kind of consumed me,” says Will, who is now 42. “I felt like I wanted to do something around the corner, but I didn’t know what.”

The answer for Will was to sell up and hit the road on a five-year travel break – a soul searching time of yoga, surfing and reading that set him on a path to living a more purposeful, sustainable life.

Will became concerned with the way pursuing profit can harm the planet, and after returning to New Zealand, he moved to Waiheke Island where he got involved with the local food distribution movement. What he learned there sparked a fresh idea and Will is now back in business with another exciting digital product, Bucky Box.

Technology that helps the planet

Bucky Box is a web application that’s designed to put small, local, often organic food producers on an equal or better footing than the huge supermarket chains that dominate food production around the world.

It does this by automating the admin jobs that make life so tough for small food businesses.

Food box systems – where people buy cheap organic food from local providers by the box load – are a great way to buy healthy fruit, vegetables and meat that does less damage to the environment. However, Will reckons the paperwork needed to run these businesses puts small eco-friendly producers at a big disadvantage compared to the more wasteful industrialised food industry.

He recalls a South Island operator who had to downsize from 600 to 150 customers simply because he couldn’t handle the logistics. “These guys are spending two days a week on admin,” he says. “But we can get that down to two hours.”

The five-person Bucky Box team launched a ‘beta’ version of the software in November 2012 and founder and CEO Will says it’s already being used in 21 countries.

Because the company is a social enterprise – a business that aims to create social good as well as profit – they are selling their software as cheaply as they can. The team reinvests a minimum of 67 per cent of profits back into food system projects, and customers in poorer countries can buy the product at lower rates. Bucky Box is also giving away half a million dollars’ worth of software to food schemes that are just starting up.

Will is convinced the way we produce food needs to shift to a decentralised, environmentally kinder model – and has put his money where his mouth is to make a change.

“We’re trying to catalyse organic farming worldwide,” he states boldly – and from anyone else this might sound like a pipe dream. But when you look at this Kiwi entrepreneur’s track-record of creating world-beating technology that changes the way people work, it’s clear that Will Lau’s new venture is one out of the box.

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