Our Vision
To become Australia and New Zealand’s leading online portal for users to locate Trades and Service Providers and also a leading source of innovative solutions for residential and commercial projects.
Mission Statement
- Tradebox works together with its Trades and Service Provider partners to discover, produce and deliver the best possible service to the user.
- The design of the site is fast, robust, user friendly, and convenient resulting in efficiency and saving our partners and users time and money.
- Tradebox is committed to being easy to use, trusted and the best source to find the right Trades and Service Providers for residential and commercial projects.
- Tradebox is committed to having comprehensive online resources, educating and informing users of good practice standards in the property improvement, construction and maintenance industry.
- The company pledges to support the technical and business development of its partners through our online portal and become the key source of work for them.
Core Values
1. Customer Service and Satisfaction
We are committed to providing the best possible solution for our customers championing their interest at every moment.
2. Integrity
We commit to acting with honesty and integrity, having no gap between what we say and what we do, while upholding the highest ethical, moral and social standards. We act with integrity and expect it from others and work with those who also live these values.
3. Constant Improvement and Innovation
We strive at getting better each and every day, as individuals and as a team by better understanding our customers, continuously working to innovate and improve our services and processes, with constant development and ongoing research, while embracing social and technological changes.
Our Progress
Tradebox went live in October 2007 after two years of planning before that. The learning curve has been steep and we've come to have over 200 prescreened, trustworthy Trades and Service Providers that have been servicing our ever growing 2,000 users with over 6,000 residential and commercial jobs submitted so far. Come join us!
Our Guarantee
Because we're confident of the Trades and Service Providers that use this hub, we guarantee that you’ll be 100% satisfied with the workmanship of our Trades and Service Providers.
Find out more about our promise to you.
Who Are We
We are a small yet progressive team that are passionate about what we do. Both of us Anthony and Anne are brother and sister, originally from Malaysia but have made New Zealand our home for nearly 20 years now. We have worked together on the Tradebox concept and had been planning for almost 2 years before launching this site in October 2007.
Anthony Ng has over 18 years experience in the building, construction and trade services. He has a Bachelor of Building degree in Construction and Project Management from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He worked for the New South Wales Department of Housing before moving on to manage multi-million dollar construction projects which included the development of a 40 storey office block on a Golf resort. He has project managed, developed, designed, built and owned commercial properties as well as residential homes in New Zealand for almost fifteen years.
The idea for Tradebox came about in 2005, where I became increasingly frustrated in that every time I wanted to look for a contractor for any home improvement or building project to do a job, let alone quoting for it, became a burden. I had to find the names from the Yellow pages, online directories and then ring them up. After I got hold of them, they sometimes did not do the type of work I needed done.
Furthermore, if I wanted to compare prices and get the best value for money, I had to repeat the process another once or twice became way too much, especially when I was dealing with fifty or more trades and trying to get 3 or 4 quotes for each trade on some of my projects.
More often than not I had to enquire with friends and acquaintances of contractors they know that have done good work. This was often not reliable and referrals I obtained were limited to the one or few that had done a particular job for them, and thus unable to get comparative quotes and best value for money. A lot of the contractors were also not from the local area resulting in higher quotes being provided. There was also the forever lingering worry if these contractors were competent enough to perform a good quality job.
Too often there are too many of these types of contractors that are sloppy and take short cuts in their work, whether they are through a referral or the directories. No wonder so many homeowners hold off doing essential home improvement or maintenance. The result is rotten floors, rotten wood, leaky windows, leaky roofs, lack of insulation living in clod, damp and mouldy homes eventually affecting their health and wellbeing of all concerned.
I believed that there had to be a better way and through researching the internet in 2005 and 2006, I began to see that through programming made available via the internet, homeowners, builders, developers could get a list of contractors that are already keen to quote on every type of job in home improvement and building sector.
As a result, in the second half of 2006, I began analysing and putting together a system that would work for both the customer and the contractor. All the customer had to do was to select the type of job or work required, fill in a few details and a list of up to four prescreened contractors would appear with contact details and link to their profiles to check them out all in one place without having to waste time searching in all the wrong places.
Customers could also rate the contractor's service acting as a virtual word of mouth referral which is displayed against their profile. These ratings provides trust, confidence and peace of mind to customers and as an encouragement to provide great service and great work while at the same time a deterrent against bad service and bad workmanship. Contractors would only select the type of work that they do in the localised areas that they operate in. After 6 months of systems analysis and design, we started work scoping, designing and programming for the website.
After extensive testing, the website went live in October 2007 with just a handful of contractors servicing a limited number of jobs. We had a very encouraging feedback from the customers and continued to acquire and screen quality contractors that are able to provide great service to customers.
Currently we are increasing our customer base by more than 15 percent every month or 180 percent per year and contractor base by 30 percent every month or 360 percent per year.
Anthony Ng: CEO and Founder
Anthony graduated from the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia in 1989 with a Degree in Building majoring in Marketing, Construction and Project Management. While in Sydney, he worked in the New South Wales Department of Housing carrying out documentation and inspection of Maintenance work on government housing stock and new construction of Flats and Houses all over Sydney. He also worked as an estimator for a contractor bidding for Australian Government projects before returning to Malaysia in early 1990.
Anthony then worked for 2 years in a Quantity Surveyors Professional office, primarily in Project Management and Project Quantity Surveying roles. Among the projects included a NZD $7 million 13 storey office project in the city centre of Kuala Lumpur.
Following that, Anthony joined Lim Kah Ngam (M) Sdn Bhd as the Project Quantity Surveyor/ Site manager of a NZ $30million 40 storey office building for Tan and Tan Developments. Working with Bauer, a foundation contractor the project was completed on under budget and on time.
Upon completion of the office building Anthony was assigned to the Bukit Jalil Golf and Country club as Construction and Contracts Manager. Here he oversaw and managed the construction of the entire golf club which included infrastructure such as water supply, access roading, reservoirs, kerbs and drainage. Other areas included two restaurants, Café, Wet and Dry Saunas, Ballroom, retail shops, bowling alley, gymnasium, tennis courts, a large Olympic size swimming pool, a Golf Driving range, buggy tracks and halfway huts.
Anthony moved to New Zealand in 1994 as a majority of his family were there. He landed a job at Hartner Construction as Quantity Surveyor/Contracts manager within 3 weeks of arrival. While still at Hartner Construction, Anthony set out to do Commercial Carpentry and Concrete work. Among the projects successfully completed included the New Zealand Foundation of The Blind and Mon Desir Apartment Basement Structure in Takapuna.
Upon the completion of the above 2 jobs, Anthony set up APT Tiling (now known as APT Group Ltd) in 1995 carrying out major Commercial tiling and Solid Plastering work in New Zealand for the last 15 years, which he runs till today. Well known successfully completed projects include the Ferrari Mesarati and Mitsubishi Showrooms in Newmarket, all Mobil On the Run Outlets, Westfield St Lukes, Phoenix Garden Apartments, the Central Post Office refurbishment, Britomart Train station, multi million dollar Residential properties and numerous other types of work ranging from Retirement homes , Hospitals, Schools, Churches and Mosques.
While still managing APT, Anthony designed, developed and built a house and 3 industrial units at Paramount Drive in Henderson, refurbished renovated and sold 2 other industrial properties, managed and built at least 7 solid Masonry and Lightweight masonry Residential Properties for numerous clients.
It was from Project Managing residential jobs that the challenge of obtaining reliable and quality contractors that provided value for money became a burden. It was difficult to find contractors with the right attitude and a professional approach that could provide even just good service to customers. I thought that if it was already so hard for me that knew the industry inside out, it would be near impossible to obtain quality contractors for the average homeowner, let alone obtaining the best value for money.
Contractors often got away with bad service and workmanship and there was no reliable way for any other customers to know. Much time was wasted calling up contractors and finding that they did not do a particular type of work. Many contractors would not travel out of their local areas and when they did they obviously had to charge for travelling, usually rendering them less competitive in their pricing.
So I thought there must be a better way by setting up Tradebox. Here my vision was to have a world where the homeowner or customer does not need to spend countless hours looking through any offline or online directories, google searches or the like in search of say 3 or 4 contractors that would willingly and gladly quote and do the type of work in their own local area, thus providing the best value for money.
All the customer or homeowner had to do was just to fill in a simple form describing their needs and they will automatically be emailed a list of contractors that are available and willing to quote for the job, with links to their online profile which had reviews and ratings form other customers. It would fast, easy and make the world a better place for everyone concerned.
Interests: Plays the piano, acoustic and electric guitars, public speaking, swimming, cycling, basketball, diving, hiking, home improvement and living, travel and multiculturalism, computer and internet systems programming, contribution to the community especially in mental, physical and spiritual help. Coaching, mentoring and education of people, business development particularly in building, add value buying and selling of businesses and properties. Dedication to family life.
Anne Casey "I've always had a passion for marketing and owning a business that I can nurture and grow. The first time my brother Anthony mentioned the idea to me, I thought that it had such a lot of potential and just what New Zealand needed! Tradebox has been a labour of love and hardwork for a number of years now and will always continue to be a passion for me. We have always strived to make Tradebox work for both the user submitting a job request as well as for the tradespeople. It's a little like match making in the home improvement and renovation land! I do hope that you will use our service and find it as wonderful as we think it is!"
About Anne: Anne graduated from University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Commerce & Post Graduate Diploma Marketing. She has over 18 years of marketing experience having worked for Farmers Trading Company, in positions in Buying and Marketing including the role as Marketing Manager for the Home Division. Since 2005, Anne has been working for Kumfs Shoes NZ (most recently rebranded to Ziera Shoes), a New Zealand company where she is heading up the marketing for the company. Anne is married with three beautiful children and has made Auckland her home since 1990.
To contact Anne, please email: contactus@tradebox.co.nz
What Others Say
Click here to read the comments of what other homeowners have to say about Tradebox.
