Christchurch’s Wahine Māori-owned Design Firm

As a wahine Māori creative director and business owner Tania McCoy must be quite rare as it’s estimated just 1% of creative agencies globally have a female owner.

Tania MCoy and Bianca Punt founded Attraction

Tania McCoy (Ngāpuhi) and Bianca Punt founded Attraction Studio in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, helping new and existing businesses with branding in the rebuild.

Attraction Studio is one of 100 Māori businesses Te Puni Kōkiri and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is supporting with their Progressive Procurement Capability Uplift Programme in 2023 to equip them with the tools for government contracting success.

The agencies jointly lead a progressive procurement policy to ensure government spend on goods and services is more equitable, including through an 8% annual target of all government contracts being with Māori businesses.

Attraction Studio has been delivering brand, web, marketing, design, and print management services to over 500 companies since 2014.

“It’s really important for us that government agencies are hiring Māori businesses to tell their stories authentically. What the Capability Uplift Programme gave us was a government lens to write our tenders,” Tania says.

The proudly (almost) all-wāhine team have a vision of building a values and relationships-driven brand and marketing agency.

“Our values include weaving te ao Māori concepts into our work. That also comes through the wellbeing of our team and everyone we work with.”

“Seven out of our 10 team are female. I guess this has pushed us more to prove ourselves and we are always innovating. We want to have women’s faces out there so other girls know it’s possible to do what we are doing,” Tania says.

Te Puni Kōkiri Progressive Procurement Lead Kellee Koia says navigating government procurement can be complex and she’s pleased to see their support make a difference to Māori businesses like Attraction Studio.

“Our one-to-one mentoring with pakihi is supporting them with the skills to win government contract work both now and in future. When these pakihi Māori do well, there’s a positive ripple effect for whānau, their communities, and Māori economic resilience in Aotearoa,” Kellee says.

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