Company history
worth reading.
A specialised service for businesses with a story to tell.
Your company's story lives in the memories of the people who built it. Board meeting minutes capture decisions. Annual reports show growth.
What they miss are the sleepless nights before the breakthrough, the warehouse flood that nearly ended everything, and the handshake deal that started it all.
A well written and produced corporate story transforms corporate milestones into compelling narratives.
How we capture authentic company stories.
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For insiders: We honour shared experiences and inside knowledge while adding forgotten context. That merger happened during the worst storm in decades, and the power went out during negotiations. Those details matter.
For outsiders: Industry jargon and company culture translate into universal business themes. Your warehousing revolution becomes a story about innovation. Your family succession challenges become lessons in leadership transition.
For posterity: The document needs to make sense to someone reading it in 50 years, when your industry might look completely different.
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Meeting rooms are where empires rise and fall. We bring these spaces to life through sensory details and human moments.
Consider the difference: "The board met to discuss the acquisition" versus "Six directors sat around the kauri table that had witnessed every major decision since 1987. Outside, Wellington harbour churned grey. Inside, the coffee grew cold as they debated the deal that would double the company's size—or destroy it."
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Milestone anniversaries like 25, 50, or 100 years deserve documentation that honours everyone who contributed.
Succession planning becomes critical when founders retire. Their knowledge walks out the door unless you capture it first.
Cultural preservation matters during mergers, acquisitions, and rapid growth that can erase what made you unique.
Stakeholder recognition acknowledges that employees, customers, and investors all played parts in your success.
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Primary industries like farming, forestry, and fishing survived droughts, regulations, and market collapses. Their resilience needs recording.
Family businesses navigate working with relatives, succession challenges, and maintaining values across generations. These dynamics create compelling narratives.
Māori businesses bring intergenerational thinking, collective ownership, and cultural values to commercial contexts, offering unique perspectives on success.
Tech companies that grew from garage startups to global players experienced dramatic transformations worth preserving.
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Phase 1: Discovery
6-8 weeks.
Initial interviews with leadership reveal the scope of the story. We identify key storytellers and moments, gather existing materials like photos and news clips, and develop narrative themes that will carry through the book.
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Phase 2: Deep interviews
8-12 weeks.
Extended conversations with 15 to 25 people bring multiple perspectives to each event. Site visits to significant locations add physical context. Company archives provide verification. Follow-up interviews clarify contradictions and fill gaps.
The real story emerges through conversations with founders and their families, long-term employees across all levels, key customers and suppliers, board members from different eras, and the people who witnessed pivotal moments.Each conversation runs two to three hours. We ask about the crisis nobody mentions anymore. The competitor who nearly crushed you. The product that flopped spectacularly before the one that succeeded.
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Phase 3: Writing.
All interviews are transcribed and analysed to identify the narrative through-line. An outline is provided with the whole book structure agreed. Initial chapters emerge, incorporating feedback from key stakeholders while maintaining story flow.
Monthly milestones include chapter targets which are delivered for review on schedule. -
Phase 4: Refinement and publication.
Multiple sources verify facts and read the draft. Professional editing polishes the prose. Design and layout bring visual life to the stories. The final approval process ensures everyone's comfortable with their portrayal. Then it’s handover to the design team, or management of this process if included.
Why company histories matter.
Memory holds what documents miss.
The founder who mortgaged their house for the first shipment. The receptionist who answered that game-changing call. The engineer who solved the impossible problem over Friday drinks. These stories exist only in people's minds until someone captures them.
External perspective finds the narrative thread.
When you're inside the company, everything feels either routine or confidential. You can't see that your Tuesday crisis meetings would fascinate readers, or that your company's pivot during COVID mirrors great business transformations. An outsider spots patterns you've lived too closely to recognise.
Time is relentless.
Your 84-year-old founder won't be around forever. Neither will the original staff who remember when the factory was a garage. Every retirement takes irreplaceable stories with it.This is a frequently asked question?
Get started with your company’s history.
The best time to capture stories is before you urgently need to. When you think “we should do this someday,” that day should be soon. People retire, memories fade, and stories disappear.
Your company thrived through challenges that killed competitors. That journey deserves more than filing cabinets and forgotten hard drives.
It deserves a book that future generations will read to understand how businesses really work.
A comprehensive company history typically requires 8 to 12 months from first interview to finished book. Investment ranges from $90,000 to $130,000 depending on scope, number of interviews, and production requirements.
This covers all interviews, research and fact-checking, a complete manuscript of 60,000 to 80,000 words, professional editing, and basic design recommendations.
Production costs for printing, design, and distribution vary based on your specific requirements.