First up in our Storefront Series, we visit Wānaka (NZ), to meet the inspiring couple behind Heatwave. Founded by Fionn and Alice, the store is built around a simple idea: encouraging more people to spend time outside, together. Shaped by London street culture, a New Zealand upbringing, and a belief in “buy well, buy less,” Heatwave brings thoughtful curation and community to the heart of the Southern Alps.

We’re Fionn and Alice from Heatwave in Wānaka, New Zealand, Aotearoa. Alice grew up in the North Island of New Zealand and I grew up in South East London. Alice was working in shoemaking and footwear design and I’d spent most of my adult life either teaching kids to ride bikes in schools or working in the Cookdaily kitchen back in London.

We met at our favourite restaurant in London, King Cookdaily. I [Fionn] was working there at the time and Alice came along to the opening party of a new location in London Fields. We were introduced through a mutual friend who also worked there and we’ve been pretty inseparable ever since!

For Alice, growing up in New Zealand, she was always surrounded by nature and everything that comes with it. Beaches, biking and plenty of hiking! Being outside is where she feels most calm and she’s happiest when she’s out in the hills with friends, whether on foot or on wheels. 

I grew up in Central London, which was quite the opposite. I was definitely active but I never really left the city, so I hadn’t seen much nature until I moved to Aotearoa. I spent most of my time riding fixies, dodging all the traffic definitely taught me good bike handling skills though!

I think growing up in a place like London can shape a lot of things. I grew up indulged in street culture, from hardcore punk and UK grime to skating and everything in between. Even though Heatwave is based on outdoor lifestyle it has a lot of influence from street culture and I think that’s where most of my ideas and influence for the shop come from. 

When we were back in London for a spell after being in Wanaka for 4 years, I realised that I missed that and it was so much easier to access the kit that I loved so it seemed like the only logical step was to bring it here to NZ and hope that other people liked it too!

If you know Alice, you know she’s always up for a challenge. She jumped on board the idea and went full send. Having worked in the industry and seeing the highs and lows of it, she’s super picky about what brands we get into Heatwave which was also a motivator for her to get involved. Her knowledge of manufacturing and textiles has been indispensable and she has a seriously good eye for design, most things that look good in the shop are because of her. 

I don’t think Heatwave would be what it is if we hadn’t done it together.

Quite a few customers have asked this and it actually came down to a time that I just couldn’t find a pair of running socks that I liked in Wānaka. Who would have thought a pair of socks would lead to this?

Heatwave is about creating a community where everyone feels welcome and providing gear that stays true to our ethos of buy well and buy less.

When it comes to the kit, we focus a lot on durability and fabric innovations. We’ve also had a hard rule from the outset of not stocking any waterproof kit with PFAs. This was really tricky at the start as so many products contained them but over the last 2 years we’ve already seen a massive switch to PFA free waterproof products.

We’re pretty picky on what we stock which could be seen as a detriment to us, but we wouldn’t be doing this if we couldn’t stand by what we were providing our customers.

We have the most amazing community! It’s the most important thing to us here. To us, it’s about bringing people together to enjoy nature and outdoors activities.

We love hosting free events, training sessions, races and whatever else we can do for the community. It genuinely feels like our job is to spend time with friends, old and new. 

One of our favourite projects so far was last year when we partnered up with After Laughter, a local mental health organisation, for 6 months where we trained whoever wanted to join, to run their first marathon or half marathon. It ended up exceeding all our expectations, everyone became such good friends and everyone crossed the line smiling! Seeing people become a part of a community and gain confidence through sport has been one of the most rewarding parts of Heatwave.

The shop aesthetic for our old shop and our new one I happily left to Alice. For our recent build she came to me with a ‘mood board’ which consisted of a green prussik cord, perforated aluminium, a picture of a cinder block and a yellow tupperware lid. She admits she’s not the best person at explaining what she’s seeing in her head but you just have to go with it. Safe to say it turned out pretty beautiful. 

We love brands that have a story, that are trying to do things differently and are community focussed. Whether its design, function or durability we like things that make us excited and enjoy working with brands that are constantly innovating. We can chew people’s ears off over the stuff we get in because we love the kit so much. We especially want to provide kit that makes people’s outdoor experiences more enjoyable.

Wanaka is a special place, it’s a very small town surrounded by mountains and lakes. People move here to be outside, many people even trade careers/financials to have an outdoor lifestyle here, so everyone is just super keen to get involved and enjoy it. Wanaka is the kind of place where you can decide you want to go for a hike, a ride or climb a mountain and within 5 minutes you’ve got a group of people together to do it. It’s pretty amazing!

Alice likes to spend as much time as she can in her home studio making and designing, anything from footwear to bags. She loves the slower paced outdoors activities like hiking, bike packing and climbing so any opportunity to tee those up with friends, that’s where you’ll find her.

I’m really enjoying running at the moment, trail/road/track so that takes up a lot of my time outside the store. But I’ll always try and squeeze a gravel or mountain bike ride in during the week, there’s nothing quite like it!

Hopefully just that we did some pretty cool stuff for our community. I think we are getting there but there’s always more we’d love to do. If we’ve helped someone spend more time outdoors or influenced anyone in a positive way, we’re happy!

It’s a pretty tough gig to be honest, there are a lot of 18 hour days and starting your own business no matter what it is, is super stressful. But I think if you make a community out of it, it can be the best thing you do! Be kind, stay true to your values and support your community.



Visit Heatwave - Wanaka, NZ

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