When Alex Livingstone was a secondary school pupil at Bayfield High School in Dunedin, he could be sitting in class when his phone would ring with a call from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.
At that time, Mr Livingstone and his childhood friend and fellow Bayfield schoolmate Abby Green were ordering more than $10,000 worth of stock at a time while their friends were working for them and being paid a wage.
They were teens helping to solve that perennial teen problem of pimples, selling a natural supplement powder containing barberries, which they sourced from Iran, which reduced acne.
It was through the Young Enterprise Scheme (Yes), a long-running initiative which aimed to give young people a taste of business.
Their business was a big hit and their Bayfield team, which also included Robert Donohoe, won the 2021 national Yes final.
"In terms of being at school, it was all very ordinary. It was cool but we were just ordinary kids at school," Mr Livingstone recalled this week.
For Miss Green, 20, and Mr Livingstone, 19, their business did not finish with the end of their school days; they are now co-chief executives of Abalro Health, running the business alongside both studying for a bachelor of entrepreneurship at the University of Otago.
Abalro is one of five finalists in the New Zealand Young Enterprise Scheme Alumni Award’s One to Watch category, which will be decided by public vote, ahead of an alumni gala in Auckland on September 14.
Abalro’s roots came from a common teenage problem — pimples.
In his earlier teen years, Mr Livingstone had bad acne which affected his self-confidence and he tried "everything under the sun" among both natural and chemical-based products to try to clear it up.
Then he and his father found a study which showed barberries reduced acne, on average by 43%, in the first month. He tried them and was delighted with the results.
The Yes scheme provided an opportunity to sell an easily consumable natural product that could help other teenagers in New Zealand. It was the only barberry product in New Zealand.
Abalro entered Yes in 2020, the first year Bayfield was involved in the programme, which is run in the region by Business South, and finished runner-up before taking top honours the following year.
Mr Livingstone believed the biggest lesson for him through the involvement with Yes was to work as a collective.
"We’re always saying, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. We’re not fighting our own battle."
Miss Green was similar, saying it was the importance of having a network, mentors and people to support you and also accepting "you’re never going to know everything".
There was also the need for the story behind the business and Abalro was solving a real problem.
Having had acne himself and having found a solution helped the business resonate with its target market, Mr Livingstone said.
Continuing the business after school was a "pretty easy decision" for both of them. In early 2022, they travelled to Expo 2020 in Dubai as New Zealand’s youth ambassadors for the Global Kaitiakitanga Project — a programme run by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and Yes.
Having notched up more than $80,000 in revenue that prior year and selling several thousand packages, they felt like they had not maximised the business’ capacity, nor how much they were affecting teenagers.
Knowing there were thousands more teenagers affected by acne in New Zealand and around the world when they eventually hit the export market, meant they were not giving up once their school days were over.
Most of their final year in Yes, they were "playing catch-up" to cope with the demand after their national success and the subsequent publicity, Miss Green said.
Previously, they had been making four packets of product a week using a small dehydrator at home.
After an appearance on television’s Seven Sharp programme, 2000 orders were received in one night.
So after that screened, and realising they had so much support, they focused on what they described as "Abalro 2.0", polishing up their website, improving their packaging and improving the powder.
Mr Livingstone and Miss Green are enjoying their tertiary studies, where they are part of the first cohort of the entrepreneurship degree. They are studying marketing, management and accounting, and are partnered with Startup Dunedin which is helping them with mentorship to help grow the business.
The introduction of the degree following their Yes success had been "like a stars alignment moment", Miss Green said.
They were also working with the Princes Trust which had provided mentorship, direction and He Kākano seed funding to invest in their marketing strategy.
Their studies were enhancing their business aspect and provided confidence behind the things they were doing. Once they finished their studies, they might pursue Abalro fulltime and they were excited to see how far it could go, Miss Green said.
At the moment, Mr Livingstone said they wanted to scale up, increasing their retail and online presence.
They were receiving orders daily and Abalro was stocked in health stores across the country.
Their growth had been in product development and now they were ready to use that growth to achieve growth in sales and customer base.
Asked whether their age had been any barrier to being in business, Mr Livingstone said people had been very responsive and supportive, particularly in the business context. Also, as young people, they could make "cheeky asks".
But just because they were young did not mean they could get off lightly when it came to logistics and, when they had $15,000 worth of stock stuck in Auckland, there were still calls to be made.
Now they were keen to give back to Yes and they had been doing some mentoring with pupils who were now involved with the programme and telling their story.
Asked how she would sum up the past few years, Miss Green said it had been "challenging, rewarding [and] life-changing".
For Mr Livingstone, being able to help boost a young person’s self-confidence and help them with their mental health, by removing a pain point, was incredibly rewarding.
