About

Zipping across the Tasman!

The origin of Zenith Heaters NZ and Australian parent company Zip Heaters (Aust)

During the depression years in NZ, New Zealand businessman George Bigger purchased a licence from New Zealand inventor Dick Potton to make and sell his Zip Water Heater.

A polio victim, Potton had built his manufacturing business making use of old model tooling from Australian manufacturers Kooka, Metters, Healing and Hecla (By Hecla it's Good!). Potton later sold Zip Heaters. It became Zip Wholesalers then Zip Industries NZ and finally the publicly listed Zip Holdings NZ Ltd which was purchased at last by Australian Company Consolidated Goldfields. At some point during the 1960's Zip Holdings ceased trading and the right to manufacture the "Zip" on-wall boiling water urn became the property of Rheem NZ¹.

George Bigger built (according to Potton's plans) and sold the Zip: a small white wall-mounted boiling water unit with an insulated copper tank and a glass gauge on the side complete with whistle. In effect the Zip was a small wall-mounted & insulated electronic urn.

Bigger sold the Zip into homes, factories and church halls (where it was renowned for bringing Parish meetings to an end when the unit's water boiled & caused the shrill whistle to blow!)

At the end of WW2 Bigger immigrated to Australia with a completely new product range; the Zip Bath and Shower Heater and Zip Boiling Sink Heater. Bigger and his small team manufactured the devices in his 20 square foot Elizabeth Street showroom/workshop, and sold them in and around Sydney. Bigger's operation was such that he would go out and sell his merchandise until stocks were depleted, then come off the road to build more. Effectively, Bigger and his small team sold Zip by day, and built more stock by night!

In 1961 Michael Jenkins Crouch (then 26 years old) met George Bigger through a friendly Accountant he had come to know. Crouch was working with his elder brother in their aged Father's import firm. MJC remembers his state of mind at that time:

"… and having no qualifications - despite being Head of the Fifths at school, later to fail the Leaving Certificate and having taken two and more years coming to realise my Economics tutors/examiners and I were on an irreconcilable course, I felt it was time to move into an area where I had no elders, and ALL decisions would be mine!"

So by March '62 MJC was in the driving seat of a business of about a dozen employees, purchased on virtually no deposit and paid off over ten years. Says MJC,

"He obviously had no other buyers or was otherwise tempted into a relationship with a young guy who proceeded to change the business from Boiling Water Heaters and bath and shower; from 'Take a Tip Get a Zip' to a broader illustrious base - 'Zip, makers of Australia's largest range of hot water systems!"

Before completing the deal, MJC consulted a leading Sydney market research firm and asked, "What can you tell us about hot water systems?" From a quite limited survey one striking fact emerged: Zip had only a tiny percentage of the hot water market.

"… We were now in competition with all other manufacturers (44 of them) in NSW and in Australia! Fifteen years later common sense started to emerge. We started to make Boiling water heaters, as the company had done in its youth. We made LARGE ones, automatic ones - brilliant decision, no university course, particularly in Economics, could possibly pave such a misguided path: We sold 62 in the first year and 272 three years later!"

Despite his self-deprecating comments, MJC had meanwhile more than doubled the profit of the company by the end of five years (1967) by offering efficient, reliable and inexpensive hot water to thousands of people living in sub-standard Sydney housing.

However, the rising cost of raw materials and increased competition in the marketplace saw Hot Water margins shrinking. MJC was persistent in his focus on the potential of Zip to create and own the "Instant Boiling Water" market instead. At last:

"Light dawned. We decided to make them smaller - the size of a standard kitchen cupboard door - in two sizes. Brilliant!"

In 1974 Zip was manufacturing and selling large Instant Boiling Water heaters but realized there might be a hole in the market for a smaller version and by 1979 had created the world's first compact instant boiling water heater.

In 1979 the Zip Miniboil² with its patented, energy-efficient Twin Chamber Technology created an entirely new market in Australia and the world, as more and more people learned the benefit of Instant Boiling Water: that it could save time and money and offer them unprecedented convenience at work and in the home.

MJC had purchased the name and trademark for Zip Australia in 1962 and over the years he registered the name in other countries around the world. However, due to the copyright licensing of the on-wall "Zip" urn still sold in New Zealand, Zip Instant Boiling Water products sold in New Zealand today (EG HydroTap) carry the name Zenith.

Today Zip/Zenith systems are used by millions on every continent every day, including over 20 Houses of Parliament worldwide.

Today, Zip Executive Chairman/CEO Michael Jenkins Crouch has come a long way from a "fail" in Economics! Michael recently received an Honorary Doctorate in Business Studies from the Australian Business School at Sydney's University of New South Wales, and an Order of Australia medal (AO) for services to Australian Business. MJC's passion for business and marketing is as strong as ever; he takes a hands-on approach to ensuring Zip - sold all over the world from offices in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom - stays at the cutting edge of the Instant Boiling Water market it helped create 35 years ago.

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¹This explains the confusion between "Zip" the internationally renowned Instant Boiling Water manufacturer and "Zip" the wall-mounted urn still loved by users in churches and other public spaces around New Zealand today.

²(1980 - part of a permanent exhibition at Sydney's Power House Technology Museum, "Australia Innovates")

SOURCE: Hoover Marketing Awards 1967 - "Marketing against a Myth" - Zip Heaters (Aust) Pty Ltd

ADDITIONAL SOURCE: email interview with Michael Jenkins Crouch 24.03.2010