Paul Pavletich (CEO) Newsletter No 1

New MNZ CEO Paul Pavletich is no stranger to world of motorcycling. He worked for Blue Wing Honda and then Papatoetoe Motorcycles spending six plus years in the trade. Although he really enjoyed it, at the time he was racing motorbikes every weekend, fixing them at night, and working with them during the day, and just got swamped with it. So rather than lose his passion for motorcycles, he decided to get out of the industry and try something else.

Pavletich explains, he then got into the supply chain industry and was pretty lucky.
“I’ve worked for some big corporates, including Nestle, NZ Dairy, Lion Breweries and Goodman Fielder, which at the time was the biggest manufacturer and distributor of food products in New Zealand,” says Pavletich. “From there I went to Gilmours which is part of Food Stuffs which is the largest retail wholesaler for food distribution, the other side of the fence as it were. The last job I had was the Operations Manager, looking after 10 Supermarkets with a fleet of 130 delivery vehicles and 800 staff. So it was a really big job, super busy but put me in good stead for this job.”
Pavletich took over the reigns at MNZ on 20th March, joining four other full-time MNZ staff. 

So how did you end up as CEO of MNZ?
“I saw that the role was vacant and I applied for it, and went through the interview process. I had a number of interviews with a selection panel, which was selected by the board.  The panel included David Appleton (previous President & CEO) and I was successful.

You’re from a road bike background, aren’t you?
“Yes and no. I did road race for many years and I actually won a National championship, twelve Auckland championships and a number of TT’s, so I was pretty proud of that. But I’ve done dirt riding all my life, including trials riding, enduro and MX. In fact up until a couple of weeks ago I was motocrossing every weekend, which a lot of people don’t know.
I love it, it’s a family thing my two daughters also ride quads and my wife Sheree has been a great support to me over the years and enjoys the occasional trail ride around our farm.

So, the dirt scene in NZ is bigger than the road?
“Yes, 90% of our members are dirt orientated which is mainly due to the fact that there are so many more opportunities for people to ride dirt bikes. Especially if you think of how many thousands and thousands of farm kids there are who get an interest in dirt bikes through farm bikes and then progress onto MX bikes, trail bikes etc.”

I understand you’ve moved the Hawkes Bay round date of the Nats to avoid it clashing with MX des Nations due to the request of BT and JC. Do you deal with those sorts of guys often?
“I don’t personally deal with them often although they do email the office regularly. But, we’ve got a good liaison through Mike Wilkins and Russell Burling who have regular contact with them and we’re listening to what they say. If it makes sense what they’re telling us and has an impact on us winning the MX des Nations, we’ve got to talk to the clubs and work with them to change it. The pride that winning the MX des Nations would give NZ dirt bike riders would be enormous and confirm that we’re the best MX country in the world.”

BT and JC have really upped the profile of MX in New Zealand, haven’t they?
“That’s so true. Kids need heroes, and that’s some of the things I’m working on for the other disciplines. For example, trials riding. I want to raise the profile of trials riding in New Zealand. It’s a fabulous spectator sport if done properly, i.e. in stadiums or specially designed parks etc. It’s probably why in car rallying the man made special stages like at Manukau are so popular, it needs to be accessible to the public and if we can manage that, it’ll be another big win for us. The ISDE (6 Day Enduro) in November this year is going to be fantastic. We have Sean Clark, Nick Reader and Vicky Simm organising this major event. I am delighted with the progress the team is making in preparation for this World Championship event. We are planning on catering for 650 riders and I have no doubt we will set the bench mark for other countries in the future. “

Getting back to your role here, do you have any specific plans or ideas to dramatically change anything?
“One of my goals is to grow membership and to get this organization financially strong. Last year we actually ran at a loss. We have a modest amount of funding from SPARC which we are hugely grateful for and that enables us to do a lot of things, although it’s not a lot of money in the big picture.
I want to televise a whole lot more meetings and one of my goals is to get sponsorship so we can get on TV. That will generate a whole lot more interest outside the motorcycle industry, which hopefully means we can draw more sponsorship in.  If you look at what the car guys did with the NZ V8 touring car series, it’s now hugely successful.
What I want to do is get our guys on TV and make heroes of them, so kids see it and think ‘Hey, I want be like him or her,’ and it’ll just grow and grow and grow. Once people see how exciting it is, we’ll move away from being a bit of a secret society, to getting more people at the events. And that’ll produce a real big injection into the industry, generating more sales and everyone will win. That’s my immediate challenge, to get our premier events on TV, and I’m pretty happy with our progress. I’ve got two rounds of the road race series going to be televised and two MX rounds getting signed off currently. But, my goal is to get the whole lot on TV. To begin with MX and road racing and then we can look at the other disciplines. For the trials I’m working with Warren Laugesen, Stephen Oliver who’s just built a trials park.

How many licence holders are there in NZ?
“5,500 and I’m really hoping to grow that. I’m looking at it as a real challenge. We’ve got to figure out ways to encourage people to join MNZ. I want to add a whole lot of added value things to encourage people to be licence holders. I’ve got a few ideas on how to do that.”
At the moment, people are only becoming licence holders out of necessity, is that right?
“Yep, if they want to abide by our rules. We run a good insurance policy that they have access to as well, so if a rider was to get hurt at one of our events, there’s an insurance policy they can claim against. And, we’ve got a very comprehensive rule book as well, concerning fair-play. We have commissioners that head the sport and add an enormous amount of value to run the events and work with the clubs. We’ve got 70 odd clubs in the “family” and that in itself is probably 20,000 members who look to us for guidance to run meetings and set rules.”

Apparently, you have quite a bit to do with the annual motorcycle awards?
“Yep, that’s true. I’d like to see it grow. What we’re doing this year is have a joint venture with Motorcycle Trader & News, to have a celebration of motorcycles event at the new $48m Telstra Centre at Manukau. We’re having a show on the 3rd – 4th February, which we’ll run in conjunction with the awards on the Saturday night at the same venue. I’m so excited by this. Already we’ve got commitments from the manufacturers. Not only will we have new bikes there, we’ll also have post classic bikes, classic bikes and celebrity bikes, so hopefully we’ll have 300-400 motorcycles there.
We’ve picked Auckland to start with but it could be held in Wellington or Christchurch in the future and the profits are going to go back in to televising more events.
It’s going to be great.