Vienna Woods Highlights European Drift Wood French Oak Flooring For New Zealand Interiors
Drift Wood flooring is characterised by its rustic texture and natural variation, designed to evoke a sense of coastal elegance. Each plank is crafted to display unique grain patterns and subtle colour differences, contributing to a bespoke look that suits both contemporary and traditional interiors. Available in both solid hardwood and engineered timber formats, the flooring is engineered for durability, with dimensions ranging in width from 140 to 240mm and lengths from 1500 to 2800mm.
The company notes that the flooring is constructed using European oak and is available in standard, wide plank, herringbone, and chevron designs. Installation is via a glue-down method, with a tongue and groove system to facilitate ease of fitting. The product is designed to withstand high-traffic environments and requires only low-maintenance care, making it suitable for residential and commercial spaces.
Vienna Woods sources its French oak flooring from responsible suppliers, with an emphasis on sustainability and environmental standards. The company's Auckland showroom provides samples and consultations for clients seeking to explore options in hardwood flooring in Auckland, with supply-only and installation services available nationwide.
The Drift Wood range is part of Vienna Woods' commitment to providing New Zealand customers with access to European craftsmanship and sustainable timber flooring solutions. Further information and technical specifications are available through the company's website and Auckland showroom.
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NZ Herald
2 hours ago
- NZ Herald
For a decade, a Chinese tailor worked 13-hour days making high-end garments near Milan
The crackdown, led by Milan's corporate court and the labour-crimes unit of the Carabinieri military police, has snared contractors linked to five well-known fashion labels including Valentino, Armani, and Dior. Loro Piana, owned by French luxury powerhouse LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, became the latest last week, and was placed under court supervision for up to a year. 'There is already a reputational issue in the fashion industry, which started with prices spiralling unreasonably,' said Stefania Saviolo, a lecturer on fashion and luxury management at Milan's Bocconi University. 'These investigations not only damage the brands involved, they affect all of Made in Italy as a system.' Loro Piana, part of LVMH since 2013, denied wrongdoing and said it will co-operate with authorities. The company said it terminated relations with the supplier within 24 hours of being informed of the contractors' existence. The fragmented, mostly family run structure of high-quality Italian manufacturing 'can pose challenges in transparency and oversight', said Toni Belloni, president of LVMH Italy. The group has strengthened controls and revised its internal charter, he said in a statement to Bloomberg News. 'However, areas of fragility remain, so we must work to improve our practices.' The fashion industry is one of Italy's biggest, accounting for about €96 billion worth of Made in Italy products in 2024, according to industry group Camera Nazionale della Moda. The vast majority are destined for overseas markets. Yet the tailor's case shines a light on the treatment of workers who make garments that can cost thousands. He worked from 9am to 10pm daily through to late 2024, when his 'caporale', or boss - also a Chinese migrant - stopped paying him for unknown reasons, according to the court documents. After repeated demands for his wages, a confrontation ensued. The employer punched the tailor and beat him repeatedly with an aluminium tube, the documents said, leading to a criminal complaint. Persistent Lapses Past enforcement efforts have failed to stamp out labour abuses. 'These cases have been increasing in the last few years, with more big groups taking control of smaller Italian companies and starting outsourcing part of the production,' said Roberta Griffini, secretary for the Filctem CGIL Milano union. Responsibility is sometimes hard to determine because subcontractors work for more than one fashion group, Griffini added. Britain has also cracked down on illegal sweatshops, particularly small factories operating in cities such as Leicester. A 2021 United Kingdom report found companies in numerous industries couldn't guarantee their supply chains were free from forced labour. For fashion producers in Italy, the supply chain should be short and closely monitored, said Saviolo of Bocconi University. Younger consumers in particular are paying more attention to brand credibility. Milan is the locus of the sprawling fashion industry in Italy, housing about one-fourth of the nation's 600,000 fashion workers across some 60,000 companies, according to Camera Nazionale della Moda. The Lombardy region's dense ecosystem of design studios, tanneries, and sample makers gives brands unrivalled speed but also shelters what prosecutors called 'a generalised manufacturing method' in which legitimate subcontractors parcel out work to micro-factories operating from converted garages and semi-legal industrial parks. Chinese-owned firms make up a significant part of this complex. About 20% of Lombardy's 10,000-plus textile workshops and factories are Chinese-owned, according to Milan's Chamber of Commerce. The area has drawn a large number of Chinese immigrants, driven by small-business opportunities, globalisation of the fashion industry, and growing family ties. A Loro Piana SpA label on a cashmere pullover. Photo / Alessia Pierdomenico, Bloomberg via the Washington Post Falling Sales The judicial clampdown in Italy is unfolding against a jittery global backdrop, with demand falling and a United States-led tariff war threatening to magnify export costs. The personal luxury-goods industry, worth €364b, lost 50 million customers in 2023 and 2024, Bain estimated last year. The sector will shrink between 2% and 5% this year, according to the consulting firm's June follow-up. Italy's fashion industry was already grappling with falling sales, inflation and international tensions. Brands squeezed by softer demand and volatile costs have doubled down on 'near-shoring' quick orders to Lombardy's workshop belt to protect margins. That very strategy, say prosecutors, is fuelling the race to the bottom that the courts are now trying to halt. Investigators traced Loro Piana's knitwear to intermediaries which subcontracted to factories where illegal migrants worked 90 hours a week and slept next to their sewing machines. The judges said the firm 'negligently benefitted' from illegal cost-cutting. The judicial administrator appointed last week is tasked with monitoring Loro Piana management's progress towards addressing its supply chain. The issues have been similar at other luxury brands, including Giorgio Armani Operations, Dior Manufactures, Valentino Bags Lab and Alviero Martini: opaque layers of small subcontractors, paper safety records, and a workforce of mostly undocumented Chinese migrants. Armani, Dior, and Alviero Martini were released of court oversight after implementing measures such as real-time supplier audits. The unit of Valentino, which is majority owned by Mayhoola of Qatar alongside partner Kering SA, is still subject to court monitoring. The Italian Competition Authority has also been involved. In May it closed an unfair-practices probe into Dior, securing €2 million in funds for anti-exploitation initiatives and requiring the company to improve supplier vetting. Dior, also part of the LVMH orbit, noted then that no infringement was established, and said it is dedicated to high standards of ethics and excellence. Armani Group, still under investigation by the competition authority over alleged unfair commercial practices, said the allegations have no merit and its companies are co-operating with authorities. Greater co-ordination In Milan, co-ordination has tightened with an accord in May between the Milan Prefecture, the fashion chamber, trade unions, and leading brands. The pact sets up a shared database of vetted suppliers and commits signatories to regular certifications. The outcome of the Loro Piana case for now rests with updates to the bench on its progress. LVMH's Belloni said the group had carried out more than 5000 audits in Italy and introduced a stronger control body. While the prefect's new protocol is a 'building block', deeper change will take time and a more collective effort is needed, he said. As for the tailor, the Milan prosecutor is now trying to get him hired legally, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing a personal matter. This would require the employer to make pension contributions, pay taxes, and provide standard benefits. - With assistance from Antonio Vanuzzo, Deirdre Hipwell and Angelina Rascouet.
The Spinoff
a day ago
- The Spinoff
We keep measuring the Māori economy – but what are we actually counting?
New report after new report declares the growth and potential of the Māori economy. But what even is it, and why do we keep measuring it? Last week, yet another report was released outlining the prowess and potential of the Māori economy. 'The 'Māori economy' is thriving and diversifying,' the report from WEAll Aotearoa begins, following with many impressive figures and statistics: 'contribution of $32 billion… asset base of $126bn'. So what are these numbers, how are they measured, and what purpose does dissecting and analysing the Māori economy as a standalone sector of our capitalist system serve? What even is the Māori economy? Honestly, I couldn't tell you. In its most recent report on the Māori economy released earlier this year, Te Ōhanga Māori 2023 – The Māori Economy Report 2023, the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment states: 'Te Ōhanga Māori is not always a separate, distinct, and clearly identifiable segment of the Aotearoa New Zealand economy.' From what I gather, what we now call the 'Māori economy' was born not from Māori, but from a colonial lens – one that separated Māori economic activity from the broader economy of Aotearoa. Before colonisation, however, the Māori economy was the entire economy of Aotearoa. We cultivated and traded internationally, maintained thriving markets with our Pacific neighbours, and by the 1800s, were actively bartering with European and American markets. There's a quote from Mānuka Henare that often gets missed in these debates. He reminded us that the artistic flourishing of the 16th-18th centuries – the carving, weaving and tattooing – didn't come from scarcity. It came from a dynamic, thriving Māori economy. A creative economy rooted in relationships, surplus, and time to think, carve and dream. And then came colonisation… Bingo. Mass disruption and dispossession completely changed the face of the Māori economy. Christ came alongside capitalism – monocultural capitalism, to be exact. For the most part, Māori were excluded from participating in the settler economy, except as low-paid labour. The wealth of the British Crown in New Zealand was essentially built on the back of stolen resources and slave labour. This depleted the Māori economy of its capitalistic wealth. The cultural wealth of Māori was also severely depleted through tools of colonisation. Laws encouraging assimilation and prohibiting Māori from speaking our language and carrying out cultural practices amounted to cultural genocide. A majority of the Māori population was forced to shift to urban areas during the 1950s to the 1970s, taking wage labour jobs and being disconnected from whenua or collective models. During this time, Māori economic power was deliberately undermined. The Crown's policy was to assimilate Māori socially, politically and economically – not to support indigenous enterprise. Clearly things have changed. In the 1970s, we witnessed what's known as the 'Māori renaissance'. A key part of this was the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal and the treaty claims process. The first claim to be settled was the Māori Fisheries claim, also known as the Sealord Deal. This provided an economic basis for iwi authorities to begin rebuilding their economic wealth, albeit under a Crown-controlled capitalist model. Other large-scale settlements such as Ngāi Tahu and Waikato-Tainui provided iwi with capital and assets, although this was a comparatively minuscule amount compared to the total value of loss. However, this led to many iwi creating commercial entities like Ngāi Tahu Holdings and Tainui Group Holdings, which reinvested in property, farming, tourism, infrastructure and finance. These entities are often what gets counted in Māori economy stats today, via Māori authorities. So the Māori economy is just measuring how well settled entities are doing? Seems a bit narrow. Yes, for the most part. In 2002, the IRD introduced a tax rate specific to Māori authorities, aiming to modernise the tax rules for organisations managing Maori assets held in communal ownership. In 2012, Stats NZ began defining and measuring 'Māori authorities' – the entities that form the core of the so-called 'Māori economy'. This legally recognises post-settlement governance entities – not pakihi Māori. This is one reason the data often skews toward iwi corporations and not the thousands of small Māori-owned businesses or social enterprises. What was the point of measuring this data in the first place, especially with such a narrow scope? A friend half-jokingly said to me it's to illustrate how Māori are leeching from the Crown – as crude as it might sound, there is some truth in this statement. The state wanted to understand how the capital being returned to Māori via the settlement process was being used, how it might contribute to national GDP and how Māori entities could be integrated into broader economic policy and investment. Arguably, the Crown began tracking these measures to make Māori legible to the state – easier to understand, manage, and control – first through tax and compliance, then through economic policy, and now through investment lenses. It began as a state-driven interest in managing, taxing and tracking Māori collectives post-settlement. However, it has since evolved into a strategic economic conversation, which Māori are increasingly reframing to reflect kaupapa Māori values, collective aspirations and indigenous economic thinking. And what is it actually telling us? That we're outside the general economy? There is an argument that by measuring the Māori economy, we're saying we need to be tracked separately because we're not good enough to stand on equal footing. Personally, I don't buy the warm fuzzy intent. As mentioned above, I suspect it started as a way to quantify what Māori were 'costing' the nation – to calculate the burden, not the benefit. Even now, those numbers get weaponised: 'Look how wealthy Māori are. Why do they still need support?' It's a setup and it flattens the story. Success in a few iwi boardrooms does not always trickle down to every whānau struggling with rent in Māngere or Moerewa. Worse still, when handled carelessly, these metrics can reinforce the ceiling. They frame success as: 'That's a great Māori business,' instead of just, 'that's a great business.' As stated in the WEAll Aotearoa report released this week, 'too often the success of Māori businesses is conflated with the Māori economy, when it is more appropriately conceptualised as Māori businesses operating within a global capitalist economy.' But there are economic benefits to measuring this data, right? Progressive procurement policies, legislative support for indigenous businesses, etc. Yes – there are some real benefits, but they depend on how we measure. To truly deliver, data must be disaggregated – by region, by business type, and by iwi lineage – so we understand the diversity within Māori enterprise. Māori must be empowered to define what counts as success – both profit and wellbeing, GDP and cultural strength. To drive real change, we need public/private partnerships to fund business support, procurement pathways, and legislation shaped by Māori data. Measuring the Māori economy enables DEI strategies, justifies indigenous business support, fosters inclusive economic development, strengthens infrastructure, and reveals systemic gaps. But it only works when Māori are designing and owning the data narrative. The data has helped some of us unlock capital, attract co-investment, and push for equity in government policy. Measurement, if wielded wisely, can be a tool for mana motuhake.
Scoop
3 days ago
- Scoop
Oil Changers Emphasises Transparent, Efficient Vehicle Servicing Across New Zealand
Oil Changers, a locally owned and operated automotive service provider, continues to deliver fast and transparent vehicle maintenance at its locations nationwide. Known for its drive-in, no-appointment-needed model, the company has established a reputation for efficient service and honest advice, with a focus on educating customers rather than upselling. At its Lower Hutt branch, Oil Changers offers a range of services including oil and filter changes, air filtration, transmission servicing, and free fluid top-ups. The car servicing in Lower Hutt centre is staffed by trained technicians who follow manufacturer recommendations to ensure all work maintains vehicle warranties. Most services are completed in under 10 minutes, and customers consistently rate the branch highly for both speed and clarity of communication. Oil Changers also provides specialised transmission services at multiple locations, including Christchurch. The transmission servicing in Christchurch covers most makes and models, subject to manufacturer requirements. The service is designed to remove nearly all old transmission fluid from the system, including the torque converter and cooler, helping to extend transmission life and reduce the risk of premature failure. The process also aims to promote smoother shifting and reduce wear on internal components. Across all branches, Oil Changers stocks a variety of oil types—conventional, synthetic, and specialty blends—to suit a wide range of vehicles, including SUVs, utes, and European models. The company's approach centres on providing clear, practical advice and using only the products recommended by vehicle manufacturers. With locations in key regions and a consistent emphasis on efficiency, transparency, and customer education, Oil Changers remains a trusted choice for vehicle owners seeking reliable maintenance without unnecessary upselling.
