New Zealand.  Famous throughout the world for their scary Haka, dodgy beige cricket kits from the 1970’s and the Lord of the Rings films.

Now add to that list their shoe repairers.

At the end of August this year the exotically named container ship Kota Juta is due to dock in Auckland bearing a myriad of cargoes from around the world.  We’d like to think that chief amongst them is a Model 710 Finisher and “700PB” Press Bench from Standard Engineering for our customer Shane Barr of Mount Maunganui on the northern coast of the North Island.

This is the second set of machinery Shane has purchased from Standard in the last 12 months.  The first set is at his shop in Tauranga, which is a few miles down the road, see the photographs.  The new set of machines will go into his store in Mount Maunganui itself.

Obviously given the distances involved the vast majority of our dealings with Shane have been via email.  We have batted specifications and amendments back and forth across the Internet to give him the best service we can.

Shane is the kind of customer we like at Standard (not just because he is almost 12,000 miles away!) because he takes seriously his machinery requirements and gives consideration to what he needs for his business.  Shane enjoys pushing us to improve our products with valid ideas for adapting the machines to his working methods.   Feedback from customers is a strong requirement at Standard as it drives us to continually improve our products and service.

Shane recently volunteered the following comments about the 710 and press in his Tauranga shop, “(The) machines are good and quick, pleasant to use”, “(The) machines are great, anyone with half a brain and a fair amount of work on should buy one.”

Hopefully as soon as his new machines are installed we will have a further update from Shane and some photographs from his new shop.