HIBS Old Boys nominated for Wellington Regional Business Excellence awards
Old boys Tim Purchas and Harry Crook were nominated for the Wellington Regional Business Excellence awards on Thursday 17th November 2022. Their story so far...
Tim left Hutt International Boys School (HIBS) in 2017 and received an offer to co-own and direct Hutt Valley Tennis Academy with performance coach of the year Marc Paulik. At the time Hutt Valley Tennis Academy was coaching the #1 ranked junior male player in NZ, HIBS Old Boy George Stoupe – (Class of 2019) and many other top tier athletes in the region.
Together Marc and Tim coached and competed in performance tennis, producing more nationally recognised players, and engaged in many charitable activities through the Purchas & Paulik foundation – including their Wainuiomata and Naenae community projects.
COVID-19 in 2020 saw changes and Tim took over complete ownership of the company. He steered the business in a new direction, officially launching as Total Tennis in May 2021, whilst keeping the integral qualities of the business . Tim increased staff from 2 to 20 people, partnered with 5 clubs across the city, partnered with 15 schools, and now the organisation has delivered tennis to thousands of people of all ages and abilities.
Tim has also partnered with PLANiTPRO and other organisations in the wider region.
In March 2022 the business was at a stage whereby Tim convinced his best mate Harrison Crook (Class of 2017) to come and co-direct the company with him. Harry and Tim have grown the average delivery to around 600 people per week across their clubs, schools, and centre programmes. They continue to self-fund community projects including renovating the interior of Michell Park which they funded and completed renovating themselves. They have subsequently launched the subsidiary streams of Total Yoga, Total Fitness and Total Events.
The business continues to go from strength to strength and they are now being recognised by the Wellington Regional Business Excellence Awards as a finalist for Best Emerging Business.
Their ultimate goal is to continue to deliver as many health, social, and fitness services as they can across the community and begin to scale this operation into more centres and clubs outside of Wellington.
They have now set up “Total Pursuit” as the parent company of their subsidiary streams of services; Total Tennis, Total Yoga, Total Fitness, and Total Events.
It’s great to see the HIBS brotherhood and HIBS service and community values shine through in this story. Congratualtions on your nomination Tim and Harry.