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Fairlie-based entrepreneur Daryl Foy has chosen the internet as the way to retail his merino wool outdoor clothing.

With the outdoors his passion, Foy relishes being based in a remote location, backing his “hi-tech skills” as a way to sell products from adventure clothing to internet games.

Foy does travel to Christchurch and other centres to show off his clothing wares, but says his clothing website provides his preferred one-to-one internet-based business model.

The adventure sportswear was carried in traditional retailers like Run 79 in Tekapo and Bivouac Outdoor in Christchurch.

But it was on the iRULE website where he gained 90 per cent of his sales. Foy settled in South Canterbury about five years ago, leaving Melbourne and his homeland of Australia to be closer to the outdoors. He chose Fairlie over Dublin, Ireland, and Portland, Oregon, partly because it had “no traffic”.

The web had several advantages over the traditional retail outlet, he said. “There’s nothing stopping you (here). It’s all up to you what you achieve _ I like that sort of challenge.”

Word-of-mouth-driven internet sales of his specialist product were essentially going up against “overbloated homogenous brands” that

relied on huge advertising budgets to drive sales.

The business had grown from scratch to profit and “strong six-figure turnover” inside four years.

He had launched the site backed by the knowledge gained in the corporate world _ including helping create a software billing system behind the broadband offering of Australian telecommunications giant Telstra. Building a business was based around targeting the right audience, he said.

Stuff