A somewhat hidden star in Southland's business world
Digital Stock's story of a tech development company operating out of Invercargill is one Southland should be proud of. They have a growing national reputation.
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Tucked away inside the old Public Trust Building in Don St, Invercargill is Digital Stock, a somewhat hidden star of the Southland business world.
The heritage building it operates out of once housed the city’s public records.
The floor-to-roof cubby holes in a vaulted room - which is now Digital Stock’s meeting room - provides a glimpse into its past.
Just prior to Digital Stock’s arrival the building was used as an art gallery.
Downstairs is now home to a coffee machine, an old-school arcade game, a couch, and a table to hang out at. It’s the sort of vibe you’d imagine from an innovative tech company.
Seven workstations sit upstairs where the coding magic happens at this growing tech business. More to come on that later.
They don’t get many visitors. The first person that walked through the door when they moved into the Don St premises was a member of the public wanting to use the toilet.
Some walk in expecting the former art gallery to still be there, only to be disappointed. Don’t be mistaken though.
While the seven staff are mostly left to themselves it doesn’t mean something special isn’t brewing inside that long skinny office space with high ceilings.
Digital Stock has made big strides since being founded in 2014 by some SIT graduates.
It’s now at the point that Digital Stock is building a strong national reputation in a particular sector.
Company CEO, and shareholder, Jim Dowling jokes that for some the name Digital Stock will sound like some sort of stock photography offering.
However, they actually operate in the technology solutions environment. Much of what they do will fly over the head of the layman trying to decipher it.
Its latest success story is through its growing partnerships with Electricity Distribution Boards [EDBs], which Dowling openly admits they pretty much stumbled upon.
In 2019 Digital Stock took on a project with PowerNet in Invercargill to come up with a system for its core billing, ICP management etc.
“We were pretty proud of it. It was a one-year project that we poured our heart and soul into…. They were happy, so we were happy,” Dowling says.
Other EDBs have since come calling.
In 2020 Digital Stock took what was a bespoke project for PowerNet and built a wider service offering that can, and is being, rolled out to other EDBs.
It is called ARC [Advanced Registry Communicator] and they now have three EDBs up and running, including PowerNet.
Although they’ve just signed up another with “a few more in the pipeline”.
They don’t shy away from the desire to eventually pick up work with most of the 29 EDBs in New Zealand.
As their reputation grows, so does the interest.
Dowling says he would like to see one in three ICPs [Instillation Control Points] in New Zealand attached to Digital Stock’s ARC system.
That’s before fellow shareholder Will Finlayson - who’s the company’s CTO - ramps up the crystal ball gazing a little.
“I’ve got a different opinion. I say all of them.”
While Dowling concedes the phrase “stumbled across” probably is a good fit for its new-found work in the EDB marketplace, Digital Stock’s business development manager Cam Richardson points out they were ready to take on such a task.
“I think it’s a testament to Digital Stock’s ability to be able to enter an industry and be able to innovate in an extremely short amount of time. It’s not only solving complex challenges but understanding complex industries as well,” Richardson says.
It’s been an eight-year journey making their way in the software development space. It started through simple bespoke website building.
Finlayson recalls the humble beginnings in late 2013 as the then-SIT graduates entered the world of tech startups. Its initial work was around the creation of Jobit, an online marketplace for one-off jobs.
In their heads, that was the ticket to financial success.
“You basically post a job and people quote for the work. We quickly found it didn’t make much money, even though there were a lot of people using it.
“But we actually started to get a lot of work through it. People would post that they need a website made.”
They launched the Jobit site with Sir Tim Shadbolt taking on the first job. He mowed someone’s lawn for $10.
They then worked their way up the country mowing lawns in a promotional push picking interviews with local newspapers along the way.
Finlayson says they got to Auckland and landed a full page, page 4 spread in the New Zealand Herald.
The problem is the site server didn’t have the capability to handle the increased interest and it crashed.
“We were like; ‘oh no, this is our opportunity, and the tech is not good enough to handle this publicity’. So, then we got home and re-wrote the whole thing.”
It was a learning curve at the start of this journey to success, which is now at the point it’s providing some large tech solutions.
“I reckon a weird part of our story is how long we didn’t necessarily think we were capable of doing something like that,” Finlayson says.
“I think we were capable from quite an early point, but we didn’t realise that.”
Finlayson says the time Digital Stock has had trying to find its way has in some part set them up well for what they are now doing.
“We have had the benefit of not succeeding early. We got really, really good at building stuff and when our opportunity came along, we were good enough to capture it.”
They concede they probably haven’t done a great job to date telling people about the success that’s happening from their office in Invercargill.
“We are so bad at telling our story, it’s typical Southland mentality,” Dowling says.
“There’s a lot of people around Southland that do really cool stuff, but no one gets out there and talks about it much because you don’t want to be seen as gloating.
“There are a lot of companies out there that are all sizzle and no steak, we’ve got a massive steak but not much sizzle.”
There’s a sense of pride attached to having some tech success operating out of Invercargill. Even if the majority of the work goes unseen to the general public.
At times there is a need to jump on a plane to visit clients elsewhere in the country because they value face-to-face relationships. Otherwise, its Invercargill base has worked for the company.
“Nowadays people say it doesn’t matter, you can work from anywhere. But at the start in 2014 going to talk to people and doing high-end development from Invercargill, we had to lean into the fact we were from Invercargill. It became a bit of a hallmark of our quirkiness,” Dowling says.
There are some cost benefits operating out of Invercargill. What they would pay for rent in a similar office space in central Auckland would far outweigh the cost of working out of Invercargill.
That more than makes up for the odd flight to visit clients.
The tech industry lends itself to remote working, but for Digital Stock prefers to have all its staff in Invercargill working out of the same office.
It was an expectation put in place from the early days, Finlayson says.
“The idea was after a few years you could go and do an OE and work remotely if you wanted to. But you’d have to work from the office to start, and it’s just stuck.”
“Literally all the code we write is done up there,” Dowling adds, pointing upstairs to the collection of desks on site.
This is a business story that on so many levels Southlanders should be proud of.
A bunch of former SIT students set up a business in Invercargill, remained in the province doing business, and is now making their mark nationally through their work in the software development space. That deserves celebration.
Go well, Digital Stock.
And didn't they win big at the Southland Chamber of Commerce Business Awards last year?