What It Really Takes to Build a Brand in New Zealand
Georgia Patten · Founder, Bored George
About this episode
Georgia Patten joins Roi to tell the story of Bored George, a sunglasses brand that was never supposed to be a company. It started out of her mum's spare bedroom, was pitched to her parents on a PowerPoint, and grew through Instagram into a brand sold in around 90 stores.
The conversation covers why she pulled out of every one of those stores this year to go fully online, why she spent more on marketing, including billboards and buses, when everyone else was cutting back, and why her ad account needs fresh ads every week because they tire within days.
Georgia also shares how she uses Claude to build her own dashboards and check which platform really drove a sale, why she thinks some brands are getting AI models badly wrong, and what running a business as a new mum actually looks like, without pretending there is any balance.
Key takeaways
- Brand is the only real protection from copycats. Anyone can make the same shape cheaper, but not the quality or the brand.
- Launch at 70 or 80 percent right and improve with every production run, rather than waiting for perfect.
- Ask customers what they want, but trust your past sales over their answers. The two are often different.
- Staying visible in a downturn makes you the brand people think of when they are ready to buy again.
- Make organic content that can double as an ad. A 5 minute office dance video brought in around 20,000 views, 70 percent of them from people new to the brand, and then converted as an ad.
- Name your ads by who is in them and the emotion they are aiming at, so a report can show you what kind of content is working.
Who is Georgia Patten?
Georgia Patten is the founder of Bored George, a New Zealand sunglasses brand. After moving home from London she managed physiotherapy clinics in Auckland, and started Bored George on the side, importing sunglasses she had collected at markets in Turkey and Morocco and selling them at local markets. She taught herself to design, launched her first original styles with 70 pairs per colourway, and has now run the business for 7 years. In January 2026 Bored George pulled out of wholesale entirely to sell only online.
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Questions
Who is Georgia Patten?
Georgia Patten is the founder of Bored George, a New Zealand sunglasses brand she started as a side project 7 years ago while managing physiotherapy clinics in Auckland.
What is this episode of The Morning Marketer about?
Georgia explains how she grew Bored George from market stalls to around 90 stores, why she then left wholesale to sell only online, and how she plans ads, content and campaigns for a brand that needs new creative every week.
Why did Bored George stop selling through stores?
Georgia could see online sales growing and wanted the freedom to market the brand her own way. In stores the product was rarely displayed the way she wanted, and selling only online gives her control.
