David Bradford - From ‘heavy hair’ to Queenstown mayor

One of the country’s most successful young hairstylists, David Bradford failed two attempts at School Cert but went on to become New Zealand’s first timeshare innovator and Mayor of the Queenstown Lakes District Council.

Born in Christchurch in 1944, the son of well-known big band jazz musician Bob Bradford and younger brother of former senior Cabinet Minister Max Bradford, David always had an eye for opportunity.

A self-confessed ‘naughty boy and nuisance’ at Christchurch Boys’ High he was the first new entrant to be caned for a smart mouthed quip during compulsory military training.

Bored, he left school at 17, by 19 owned his first business, and by 22 employed 20 staff.

“I’d worked as a bank junior and saw a guy who was a ladies’ hairdresser walk into a lunch bar with two pretty girls,” he recalls. “I had no idea guys could do that and thought it would get me girlfriends.” After training at International College of Hairdressing night courses, he was selected as an assistant to an imported famous Swiss stylist at ritzy department store Beath’s.

At 18 David was winning top national hairdressing competitions and opened his first hair salon in Armagh Street on minimal ‘400 quid’ borrowings from his parents.

He then opened a Lichfield St ground floor salon with fashion legend Paula Ryan starting a modelling school upstairs soon after. David then launched his own college on the third floor, training more than 1000 kids on six-month courses over 20 years.

By age 25 David employed 40 staff. It was here he learned business skills fast. He opened the first ‘Heavy Hair’ shop in the early 70s. “We were first in NZ doing the first Vidal Sassoon style cut and blow waves.”

He then opened salons in Wellington, Auckland and Queenstown’s newly opened Wakatipu Trading Post in the mid-70s, having already discovered Coronet Peak skiing holidays in his Ford Escort in the late 60s.

In the late 70s David bought Queenstown’s first townhouses at Turner Heights on Queenstown Hill with plans to launch NZ’s first timeshare resort after witnessing the concept when travelling overseas.

Not long before in Christchurch he’d met an attractive young Sri Lankan-born Air NZ international stewardess heading to London to study interiors at the prestigious Inchbald School of Design. “I needed a townhouse designer so flew that lovely girl Wendy, that I’d met, back from London.” They moved to Queenstown in 1980 and married in 1981.

Turner Heights was hard grind, and David employed some “creative marketing”, selling timeshares for anything from $100 a week low season to $325 peak ski season. Within 10 years he was selling quarter shares (three months a year) in completely renovated townhouses using the new fractional ownership concept.

Gradually David sold his hairdressing businesses, but eldest son Stuart, from his first marriage, opened Loose Ends in Queenstown.

Wendy and David dabbled in fashion retail launching Jailhouse Leathers in the new O’Connell’s Pavilion, for which David became leasing manager, Wendy also a Jazzercise instructor and ski hostess.

Keen to get change happening, he won a seat on the former Lake County Council in a byelection, definitely seen as the odd one out – a “city slicker and cheeky bugger” around a table of long-time local farmers.

Asked to head up the then Queenstown Promotion Bureau (now DQ), David tried and failed to extract local promotional funding from the Lake County, Queenstown and Arrowtown Borough Councils to market the town. “I think the three councils gave us about $1250 a year!”

He wanted to change the world so when Mayor Jim Grant stepped down David stepped up, later narrowly losing to former Mayor Sir John Davies twice before finally winning in 1989.

He also ran Southern Tourism, a research consultancy and after six years as mayor the family moved to Wellington for the three kids’ schooling.

David managed a land development company for Queenstown developer Howard Paterson and business partners from Christchurch and Wellington. “They bought 125ha of residentially zoned land at Whitby in Porirua.”

Three years later David bought the company, developing 500 residential sections over 15 years.

He’s pretty chuffed to have founded Whitby Independent College too – the first independent (private) co-educational secondary school developed in the Wellington region in almost 100 years, which he sold to top NZ school, Samuel Marsden Collegiate in 2008.
Whitby now has a population of about 12,000 to 15,000 residents and David continues to work in commercial and residential real estate at 81.

Golf, year-round tennis and ski trips to Queenstown keep the body active, but David’s still working 30 hours a week. “I will never stop working. I have to keep my brain active.”