Profile: Aaron Jay and Hortus

“Keep your head down, keep your ass up, don’t ask too many questions, buy a house, and take a vacation once a year.”

Decades later, his Marlborough staffing company employs 110 full-time workers in three provinces, a few hundred Travellers and New Zealanders, and 1,200 Recognised Seasonal Employees (RSEs). “I don’t want to think about it too much because it makes me sick,” Aaron says. “There’s a lot of responsibility when you think about the number of people who depend on income from working for Hortus, especially under the RSE scheme.”

He is pleased with the recently published Hortus Impact Report, which illustrates the earnings power of RSEs in the countries where workers come from, including businesses started, homes built and land purchased. But it is a success he attributes to the workers at one end of the equation and the vineyard operators at the other, calling Hortus the link between them. “We simply don’t have the business without them, and the impact is ours to share.”

Let’s get to work!

Aaron moved to New Zealand in 2001, when he was 21, three years after his British father and New Zealand mother arrived with their two younger brothers. “Life dealt us some cards and required me to come a bit later,” he says. He left school at 16 and worked a series of jobs, including insurance, banking and data analytics. At the time, they meant little to him, but in retrospect they proved valuable, “for lack of a better word,” internships.

When he arrived in New Zealand, Aaron began working in vineyards, trying everything from piecework to driving tractors. When his wife Renee, also a vineyard worker, was pregnant with their first daughter, they decided they needed a new plan and in 2008 they set up Marlborough Vine Works with seven RSE workers, half a dozen Kiwis and a van. They also had an ethos of respect, and from the outset the couple were adamant that they would never ask anyone to live in accommodation they didn’t want to live in, or do work they didn’t expect to do. These are values ​​that were supported by “a really amazing client base,” says Aaron. “The first group of advisors we had were our clients… They saw something in us and became our biggest advocates.”

Years spent on the Marlborough vineyard exposed Aaron to the reality of “rogue” contractors at the time. “I wanted to try to provide a much more professional service and peace of mind so that the farmers who employed us knew we were doing the right thing by our people,” he says. “Having worked in the industry and with people who didn’t look after their employees, I knew what not to do; I just had to figure out what to do.”

The lessons learned from Aaron’s previous jobs – from the desk to the vineyard – proved valuable as Aaron came to understand everything from insurance and mortgages to the implications of the official cash rate. However, the early years of the business were difficult as late payments from clients put the family home at risk and Aaron worked 80-hour weeks trying to stay afloat.

Eventually, he took the advice of his then bank, BNZ, and took an Icehouse Ownership Management Course, which radically changed the fortunes of his business, including changing its name to Hortus in 2013 and transforming it into an employee-owned winegrowing business. “We learned a huge amount and it changed the shape of the business,” Aaron says. In the 14 years since he started at Icehouse, the business has grown 29 per cent year-on-year and expanded into Hawke’s Bay and the Bay of Plenty.

Icehouse’s influence

Aaron immediately dug into Icehouse, “like a sponge, soaking up everything he could.” The program developed his understanding of branding, marketing, goal setting and leadership, as well as the importance of finding the right people to grow Hortus with him. “That’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned – the confidence to make decisions and plug the gaps by hiring the right people to support me. We’ve got a really strong team now.” That means constant reinvestment to help Hortus move to the “next rung on the ladder,” he adds. “We’re constantly investing in the future.”

In addition to his education, Icehouse has provided him with a “massive” network, working with people from all walks of life—from meatpacking plants and stainless steel companies to giant multinationals—a valuable cross-section of perspectives. The group has met every year for the past 11 years and has often reached out, so that what were once “complete strangers” now understand a lot about his business and family. “It’s made me realize how important it is to have people who support you,” he says. “Being an employer and a sole proprietor is really lonely. Sometimes you wonder how you’re going to get through it. Having people at Icehouse in the same situation as you, you can lean on them and use them as someone to talk to… The network and the insights you can get from those people is incredibly powerful.”

Aaron was inspired to build a similar culture of support within the company, “and now we have some really amazing alumni outside of Hortus, but we also have some amazing ones within Hortus.” Aaron led 10 of his employees through the Icehouse program to make sure the team was aligned and productive, with a shared view of Hortus’s “personality” and its place in the wine industry. “We use the same terminology in terms of the direction of the business.”

The New Zealand wine industry is growing in scale and maturity, and its people, technology and aspirations are constantly evolving, says Aaron. “It’s an amazing industry to be involved in and one we should be incredibly proud of.” He is equally proud of the RSE program, launched in 2007, believing it to be a win-win for the wine industry and the seasonal workers it employs. According to the Hortus Impact Statement, more than NZ$25 million in RSE earnings last year, after deductions, benefited 24,020 families and friends in the workers’ home countries, and 67 businesses were started as a result of the income, along with 69 land purchases and 257 homes built. These life-changing opportunities mean a lot, says Aaron, echoing the values ​​espoused by Sam Stubbs of the Simplicity KiwiSaver Fund, which talks about the intersection of money, choice and dignity. “If you have access to money, you have choice, and if you have choice, you have dignity,” Aaron says. “My goal is to create that opportunity for as many people as possible.”

Hortus Impact Report

The 2023 Hortus Impact Statement reports that 1,200 Recognised Seasonal Employee Scheme employees working in New Zealand for between two and seven months earned a combined net income of NZ$25 million between January and December 2023, impacting 24,020 family and friends back home. Information drawn from company data, employee survey results and personal stories reveals that 67 employees used their earnings from Hortus in 2023 to start businesses, 69 bought land and 257 built a home, while the income also paid for 2,100 children’s college tuition. Hortus founder Aaron Jay says these numbers embody what Hortus calls the MAP values: Making a Difference, All Together Better, Proud of What We Do. And they are a testament to the people we work for, he says. “These are not our numbers; these are the numbers of our customers.”

Icehouse

Small and medium-sized businesses are the “powerhouse” of the New Zealand economy, says The Icehouse CEO Olivia Blaylock. As a registered charity, The Icehouse champions the medium-sized business sector in Aotearoa, she says. “For 23 years, The Icehouse has listened to and mentored 4000 Kiwi business leaders to achieve an average post-program growth of 250 per cent in their businesses. With the business landscape at a significant time of change, the entire Icehouse team is focused on providing timely support to owner-managers across the country.”

Icehouse graduates have achieved an average compound annual growth rate of 11.03%, compared to the SME average of 6.35%, and operating profit growth of 15.61%, compared to 6%. The recent SME Impact Report, which includes data from over 900 unique companies from 2017 to 2023, reveals that 77% of Icehouse graduates have seen an improvement in financial performance, and 83% have seen an impact on personal well-being.