The Criterion Group

Abstract

From humble beginnings in the family garage in the mid 1960s, Wally and Brian Smaill have built Criterion Furniture into Australasia's largest manufacturer and marketer of ready-to-assemble furniture, with significant markets in the USA, Singapore, Hong Kong, Guam and the Philippines, in addition to its home markets in Australia and New Zealand The company's development was sustained and even dramatic over the first 20 years of its existence. By the late 1980s saw a radical shift in the US market, and equally radical changes to economic management policies in New Zealand. The impact of these changes on the company was sudden and severe. In recent years the company has had to reinvent a strategy around a new business model