It’s all still a bit hush hush. As yet, Brendan Duffy, managing director of Levin’s Canvasland, is barred under contract from saying exactly what his company provided for the set of King Kong, Peter Jackson’s latest movie.

But for the manufacturer of canvas and PVC goods, it was a big order that had staff working late into the night and on weekends because it had to be filled quickly. Confirmation of the job came the week before Christmas and staff were installing it by very early in the new year, Duffy says.

That sort of challenge is just what Duffy signed up for when he and his wife Sheryl bought Canvasland. “At the age of 32, [I] decided I wanted to do something different, so I ended up buying this company.”

Back then, in 1987, the company had an annual turnover of $240,000, three employees and just three main products — tarpaulins, painters’ calico drop sheets and caravan awnings. The Duffys, whose two children were then toddlers, took on a huge mortgage with interest rates to match; Brendan’s transport around town was a 50cc scooter. And before he took over he’d had just seven days’ experience making things from canvas and PVC. “I didn’t probably appreciate what I was really doing. It was a huge risk.”

He decided early on to seize every opportunity that came the company’s way. “We said yes to any enquiry that came in the door and we used our usual Kiwi ingenuity by saying to ourselves ‘What the heck do we do now?’”

That first winter the company had to resew 10,000 wrongly constructed wool bales. Canvas­land called on local sports groups to help with the unpicking and reassembled the lot within five months. “That was an opportune project that gave us quite a nice cash flow very early on,” recalls Duffy.

Now Canvasland has an annual turnover of $3.5 million, employs 25 (including two of the original three staff) and makes myriad products including trampolines, pool-length inflatables, boat pontoons, lumbar rolls and sports equipment such as rugby tackle bags. And Brendan and Sheryl now both ride Harley-Davidsons.

Early on, Duffy realised to survive (and grow) in New Zealand Canvasland had to make products with an edge. “The last thing we want to be doing is manufacturing bulk items that can be bought in from offshore.” They had learnt their lesson when the market for painters’ drop sheets died. “We lost the lot. [They became] all imported, made up cheaper than we could buy the raw material for.”

He also wanted the company’s products to have enough variety to remove the business’s inherent seasonality (originally the company was flat out in summer and had little work in winter).

So Duffy searched for companies that Canvas­land could make a product for, companies he thought would grow.

When Duffy bought Canvasland, it had been making a few pontoons for Picton-based Naiad Inflatables. Since then, the two companies have grown in tandem. The relationship hasn’t always been smooth — that a rival was also using Canvasland didn’t exactly please Naiad, but all of Naiad’s inflatable pontoons are still made in Levin. “They are still doing a good job. He was always keen to do better, which is why we stick with him,” says Steven Schmidt, Naiad co-owner.

And then there are those unusual one-off items, like the landing platform for those wanting to try out a trapeze at the Weber Bros circus. A traditional safety net wouldn’t work for inexperienced jumpers because it’s only safe if you fall on your back. So circus artistic director Freddy Osler designed a landing platform with a crumple zone that would protect anyone who landed on it.

“When I was developing this thing I knew I was going to work with someone who was as keen as I to get to the final solution,” says Osler. Canvasland would develop it up to a point, then Osler would drive to Levin from wherever the circus was performing to test the latest iteration. Testing meant Osler climbing onto Canvasland’s second-floor balcony and jumping onto the bag.

“The first couple of attempts were disappointing, but then we got together. We did find the ultimate solution to it and you can now come down onto that bag, fall on top of your head and you’re as safe as houses,” says Osler.

A landing platform for budding trapeze artists may be a quirky product, but Duffy can see yet another business opportunity. He wants to work with Osler to develop other extreme games with potential at home and offshore.

So far, the international market is less than 10% of Canvas­land’s business. “Export is still exceedingly hard,” says Duffy. But that doesn’t mean the company isn’t going to try — pool inflatables for the sweltering climes of Australia is one area where it thinks it has an advantage. “We are going to be very cautious because as a small company we can’t afford to make a botch-up.”

The company’s small town location is something Duffy — who was last year elected mayor of the Horowhenua District Council — revels in. “I don’t know if we could have been this successful if we were in a city. Our strategic position between the two islands gives us a real advantage.”

If he needed any confirmation of his decision to stick with Levin, it came from the purchase of the then Auckland-based Supertramps Trampolines about eight years ago. In Auckland the trampoline company had been paying more than $60,000 in annual rent; in Levin that dropped to $7,000. Says Duffy: “We could deliver a trampoline to a customer in Auckland overnight for less than what it was costing to deliver a trampoline across Auckland in the same time frame.”

Another small-town advantage peculiar to Levin is the cluster of textile businesses that have grown up there. “We actually swap staff and machinery. So if a company is quiet and they have spare staff, there’s always the opportunity to pick up that capacity and we’ve done that.”

The Levin company last year won two awards from the Industrial Fabrics Association International — one for the trapeze landing platform and one for pontoons. It’s all a far cry from unpicking wool bales.