Outside Sports' 30 Years of Adventures

Outside Sports has just turned 30 years old – but our roots go back much further – all the way to the childhood passions of its founders and present-day owners. We believe that a large part of the company's enduring success is because everyone involved has an authentic love of outdoor adventures - along with a passion for the gear that makes it possible to get out there and have the very best day possible. 

Today there are seven Outside Sports stores in the Southern Lakes, each one with its own story. Let’s start with the latest addition to the family. 

The opportunity to open a store in Tekapo came when the Rieder family who own the Round Hill ski field asked if we were interested in being part of their new lakeside commercial development in the heart of the village. Having a store in Tekapo right beside the Dark Sky Project building looked like a really good way to expand the business. But before the store opened its doors Covid came along. That of course created a few anxious moments, but we always like to take a long-term view of things and could see Covid would just be a blip that we could navigate our way through, so we kept calm and carried on. Since then, with a great local crew on board, Tekapo has been a ticking along very nicely with a consistent trade all year round. What’s more Tekapo gives us a high profile in Canterbury’s busiest tourist hotspot. 

Outside Sports Te Anau can be traced back to 1976 when John Greaney visited the town and decided to make it his home. John is an accountant who at the time was working in New Plymouth as a tax inspector, but he is an outdoorsman at heart and the lure of Te Anau was too much to resist. 

So all in one month John resigned from the IRD, bought the local Te Anau sports store then known as Speden’s Sports, and headed south. Along with the business John also acquired the building. He and his wife moved into the apartment at the back, which eventually became the staff quarters. 

John knew a thing or two about retailing having worked at a sports store in Dunedin in his student days and saw massive potential in his new store, which he renamed ‘Te Anau Sports.’ It was the first business in town to open seven daysand the first to accept credit cards, which the big spending American tourists preferred to use.What’s more, John was an early adopter of technologyand began computerisingTe Anau Sports at a time when most New Zealand businessesstill ran on bits of paper stored in ring binders. 

John was always on the lookout for opportunities to expand the scope of business. When he bought the store,it was focused on sellingvery specialised hardware likefishing and hunting gear, which he felt was a handbrake on potential growth. So John quickly diversified into other sports with broader appeal. Each year he added another one, including hockey, tennis, and basketball. During that time the big revolution was the introduction of the first internal framed packs, which made them a lot more comfortable and brought many more people into hiking. 

Despite all the excitement, John saw that internal framed packs were really just more hardware. His ambition was to develop the softgoods side of the business. However, in the 70s and early 80s that was wasier said than done. There wasn’t much made locally, and incredibly tight import restrictions meant importing was an exercise in frustration. For example, John tried to import American military jungle boots to sell to hunters and hikers, but his import licence applicationwas turned down because Christchurch based Skellerup made rubber soled gym shoes - which the NZ government thought was pretty much the same thing! 

In 1995 (at around the same time that John and Judy Knight were opening Outside Sports in Queenstown) John Greaney joined the Sportsworld group to access its buying power. It was through Sportsworld that he met Peter King of Good Sports in Wanaka – more on that a bit later. 

However, Sportsworld didn’t live up to expectations and John began looking for other opportunities. When the chance came up to buy Craig Wanty’s 30% share of Outside Sports in 2003 he jumped at it. He became John and Judy’s Knights partner, and Te Anau Sports morphed into Outside Sports Te Anau. At the same time Chris Duffy and Martin Beulink bought 10% of the company, but then resold their shares to John, and John and Judy, just a few years later. 

In 2014 John sold his share of Outside Sports to John and Judy, who then sold it to Darren and Floortje Grimmett. At that time Darren and Floortje were both working for Peter King at Good Sports in Wanaka, which we’ll talk about now... 

Like Te Anau, Outside Sports’ Wanaka story also begins in 1976, when Peter King moved from his hometown of Dunedin to devote himself to skiing at Treble Cone. His idea was to get the skiing bug out of his system so he could pursue a more serious career. Treble Cone opened as a commercial ski area in 1976, featuring rope tows and no snow groomers. It was more like a club field, and Wanaka was still a sleepy farming town that largely closed for business during the winter. When Peter moved to Wanaka, his employment options were very limited - either farming or building. He chose the carpentry route, beginning a building career that would run alongside his retailing interests for years to come

In 1977, Peter started a small side business in his garage called “The Workshop Ski Repairs.” This was his first foray into the snow business. In 1981, he and his first wife, Jill, opened a womenswear shop called “Friends Boutique” in the newly completed Pembroke Mall, which he had recently helped build.

The building industry had holidays over the Christmas period, so to fill the break, Peter started a windsurf school and rental business based on the Wanaka lakefront. In 1984, while having a few drinks with his friends Nigel Webster, Peter Thomson, and Stephen O’Connell, they hatched a plan to open a ski retail and rental business. The idea was to combine the windsurf school with Peter Thomson’s Motatapu Kayaks and Clutha River Rafting, which Nigel operated.

Good Sports was born, and in July 1985, they opened the doors on Dunmore Street, where the shop still stands today. Peter built the first part of the building, Nigel ran the business, and the other partners helped out when needed. In 1989, Nigel and Peter Thomson decided to sell their shares, and a few years later Stephen did the same. Peter then purchased their shares and began running the shop full time.

In 1991, Peter built an addition onto the existing shop, tripling the floor area. A few years later, he added another building, which now houses the ski hire and workshop.

Peter remembers that first day of trading in 1985. They had opened their brand-new business and were very excited, but they only sold one ski basket that day, much to their disappointment. At the time, Dunmore Street was very much a back street in Wanaka, as all the action was on the lakefront. But Peter had a great idea that soon drew lots of people to Dunmore Street: a ski field shuttle that departed from outside the shop. Over time, this grew from a few vans into a fully fledged passenger transport business – that’s how Floortje came to be involved as a bus driver in 2006.

The shuttle service had such an impact on the winter trade that by the mid-1990s, Peter opened a dedicated surf, snowboard, and skate shop called CBS (Central Board Supply). It sold all the major hardware, footwear, and apparel brands in the surf, snowboard, and skate categories.

Wanaka was growing into a year-round holiday destination, and Good Sports grew with it. One of Peter’s key challenges was providing year-round employment to retain his best staff. This led to diversification, and he joined the Sportsworld group. Soon, Good Sports was selling almost anything a holidaymaker could want, from bikes and golf balls to straw sun hats.

The next significant step toward Good Sports becoming Outside Sports came in 2006, when Darren Grimmett joined the business, followed soon after by Floortje.

Darren has been involved in Wanaka his whole life. In 1953, his grandfather, a keen sportsman, bought a section on the bank of the river at Albert Town and built a holiday house. His father was also a keen sportsman, so Darren spent his childhood waterskiing, snow skiing, fishing, and hunting – and as a baby, even attended the opening ceremony of Treble Cone.

The pull of Wanaka proved so strong that Darren moved there from Invercargill in 1997 while working in sales for Repco. A promotion to store manager in Gore took him away for a couple of years, until Peter King came to the rescue and offered Darren the chance to put his talents to better use by managing Good Sports.

Coming from a multinational corporate environment to a small but highly complex Wanaka business put Darren on a steep learning curve. After a couple of years, he understood the business and began to see fantastic potential for its future growth. Darren says, “Some aspects of the business, like sales forecasting, are sometimes more about feeling than facts, but over the years you develop an intuition for what’s going to work.” Today, as General Manager of the Outside Sports group, Darren and Head of Buying Benji Knight use their “crystal balls” to create the best selection of outdoor adventure gear and apparel in Australasia.

When Darren first joined Good Sports, the key brands at the store were Icebreaker and The North Face. But as more international tourists came through town, other global brands became increasingly relevant. The game-changer was Patagonia in 2015 following the merger, followed by Arc’teryx in 2019. At that time, Darren and John recognised that brand exclusivity was the way to go, and since then it has been a key consideration whenever bringing new apparel brands on board.

But we’re getting slightly ahead of ourselves! Let’s wind back a few years.

Peter King and John Greaney had been friends since their Sportsworld days, and since Outside Sports was looking to expand into Wanaka, it was clear that a merger of the two companies made sense. In 2009, Good Sports became Outside Sports Wanaka, with Peter King holding a 20% share in the new entity, which owned all the stores. 

Like Darren in Wanaka, John and Judy Knight had both spent a lot of time holidaying in Queenstown as children, and during John’s career as a professional Ironman he’d used Queenstown as a training base. So it was natural that when the Knights wanted to settle down (Benji was on the way) they choose QT as the place to be. Wanting to do something gear related they decided to establish a retail operation of a kind that hadn’t been seen before in New Zealand – a true premium multi-brand adventure outfitters that sold the world’s best climbing, hiking, skiing apparel and equipment - plus, of course, bikes, incorporating an exisiting local biking workshop run by legendary Dr Bike. The original shareholders in the business were John and Judy, and their friend Craig Wanty who had been a shareholder in R&R Sport (which later became Torpedo7). 

Outside Sports got off to a brilliant start in Queenstown. The partners secured a brilliant location at the top of the Mall, which is now Starbucks, and opened the doors in November 1995. The new store was an immediate success with locals and visitors alike.

Meanwhile another soon to be famous local brand was coming to life. One day a young Jeremy Moon turned up at Outside Sports with a little suitcase of merino base-layers he called Icebreaker, and our longest running supplier relationship was born. 

Icebreaker was also integral to another first for Outside Sports. In 1999, at a time when most people were still trying to get their heads around how to make money on the internet, Outside Sports was way ahead of its time by launching online retailing. Managed by Judy outsidesports.co.nz was the New Zealand outdoor industry's first ecommerce website and Icebreaker was the hero product.  

When the lease ran out at the Mall in 2004, Outside Sports moved to Lower Shotover Street to a purpose-built three-story store (+basement for the workshops) beside where Fergburger is now. 

The shop stayed in that location until 2014 when an opportunity came up with John Martin and Sir John Davies to move to a big new site that would let everything be on one level, which makes a lot more sense for a retailer than being spread out over multiple floors. 

The new building at 9 Shotover is another example of Outside Sports being ahead of the curve – it’s a highly spec’d, low energy consumption building which never fails to amaze people away when they first step through the door. In fact, Malinda Chouinard, who was in town with husband Yvonin 2023, visited Outside Sports and pronounced it the best independent Patagonia retailer she had seen anywhere in the world! And she would know! 

Other Outside Sports initiatives in Queenstown have been the Ride Centre that ran from a container by the gondola for several biking seasons, the Icebreaker Touch Lab at the airport (where the airport store still is now), Outside Adventures in the Mall, which was an offshoot that sold super-premium apparel like Canada Goose, and the Arrowtown stores. The first Arrowtown store in the early 2000s didn’t last too long as the overseas tourist trade hadn’t fully developed, but the new one has nailed it – with a beautiful space in an ideal location that a brand representative dubbed it New Zealand’s first ‘outdoor apparel boutique.’ 

Another part of the Knight’s formula for success in Queenstown was to only employ people who were as genuinely passionate about adventure sports as they were. And early on they struck gold there too. Lance Brown and Tsukasa Anyoji were among the first onboard, both starting off in the snow rental department. Through the years hundreds of snow sports and bike stoked people have joined the Outside Family. Some stay just for a season and others like Lance and Tsukasa, and Kazu in Wanaka, have been with us for nearly 30 years. There have been people who came to Queenstown fell in love (with the location,and also other staff members in several cases) and stayed to build a life in the Southern Lakes. And they are all still connected by their time working at Outside Sports. In this way Outside Sports is not just a store, but a centre of gravity for the wider Queenstown community.  

In fact, community has always been a cornerstone of Outside Sports ethos – and doesn’t mean just turning up, waving a flag and hoping some commercial benefit rubs off. The company has invested tens of thousands of dollars of hard cash into creating and running our own events, as well as helping to develop sports infrastructure in the area. Perhaps the best example is the donation of $30,000 over three years to support the building of the mountain biking trail network at Seven Mile Bay – a place that’s still a favourite of local riders. We’re still donating very substantial amounts today with membership of 1% for the Planet, plus on going financial support for the public trail networks throughout the Southern Lakes and the Te Araroa Trail Trust. 

What does the next 30 years look like for Outside Sports? For one thing you can be sure that we won’t stand still. Outside Sports has been an innovator at the forefront of the adventure sports retail industry since the day we opened, and that is certain to continue. 

Foot traffic is back up to its pre-Covid levels and we are continuing to add new world-class brands to our stable.

Since Judy sold her first Icebreaker item online in 1999 the internet side of the business has grown exponentially and we predict that it will grow even more with our Australian .com.au website up and running successfully. 

Watch this space for more exciting developments, because after 30 years we're still just getting started.