‘We’re in the goodbye business, not the grief business,” says Sharon Hunter, who is looking at me over Zoom, still unnervingly resembling the 22-year-old who launched PC Direct to enormous success 33 years ago. (Yep, it was that long ago… I counted).
Her hair is expertly cut into three different lengths, Jennifer Aniston-style, which means that at each friendly nod of her head, her hair grazes her chin, her collarbone and her shoulders at the same time. She radiates a happy-go-lucky vibe and, yes, I have to say it, good fortune as well.
It’s the face that launched a tech company on the stock exchange and won big time. PC Direct was founded with her then-business partner Maurice Bryham (also a 20-something).
The OG “start-up” opened with a modest $68,000 in capital and traded out of a small shop in Auckland’s Ponsonby, taking on the big multinationals supplying parts for computers. It traded on being a local business.
It was hugely successful, becoming an iconic brand of the tech era before being sold to Nasdaq-listed US Office Products in 1997 for $28 million.
It’s the kind of rags-to-riches story about
