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Why the kiwi name? I'm in NZ and thought there may be some connection.
by xupybd 6y ago
Why the kiwi name? I'm in NZ and thought there may be some connection.
- philliphaydon 6y agoI thought NZXT computer cases was an NZ company lol. Same with KiwiCo
- bdash 6y agoThere's no direct connection to New Zealand. The founders visited New Zealand at some point, and brought back a stuffed kiwi toy for their child. When naming the company, it crossed their mind and so they went with it[1]. Their offices are in Mountain View. I used to live around the corner from them. [1]: https://www.kiwico.com/blog/2011/06/09/why-the-name-kiwi-crate/ https://www.kiwico.com/blog/2011/06/09/why-the-name-kiwi-cra...
- divbzero 6y agoYes, I think they’re right along Dana Street.
- zoomablemind 6y agoCoincidentally, the crate/box color is brown-yellow, almost like the kiwi fruit skin. Quite sturdy boxes, handy as toys organizer when on road trip with kids. Feeling bad throwing these boxes to trash, but they will add up. As an idea, maybe they could make use of the surface and print some cut out details which could be eventually assembled into something (a model of some kind). Or the very least put some templates on the website to facilitate the reuse. Kids would learn that the box should be considered a resource too, not just the juicy sweet content inside, so to speak, extending the kiwi-fruit metaphor.
- Taniwha 6y agoSadly there's a long history of American companies taking our NZ identity, after they renamed Chinese Gooseberries as "kiwifruit" many people stopped recognising "kiwi" as a nationality. Nowdays if you claim to be a kiwi in the US people look at you blankly trying to figure out why you might be a small fuzzy fruit
- jacobolus 6y agoSo-called Chinese gooseberries have nothing to do with gooseberries. The Chinese name is something like “monkey peaches”. “Kiwifruit” is certainly no more misleading than either of those names.
- Taniwha 6y agoThey were called "Chinese Gooseberries" in NZ before they were called "kiwifruit"
- markdown 6y agoKinda related: Aussies are trying to pull of a similar scam, renaming a Bolivian fruit called achachairu. Check it.. this is supposedly a "news" website calling the fruit by a name made up by Aussie marketers: https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2014-06-19/gallery-achacha-fruit/5531796?nw=0 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2014-06-19/gallery-achacha...
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoIs the ordinary Bolivian name achachairú and the Australian grower is marketing it as achacha? I dunno if I'd get my titties in a tangle over that. It's not like they're renaming it to Burdekin Fruit.
- dmayle 6y agoYou might want to set aside the anti-American prejudice, as you've got your facts completely wrong. T&G, the New Zealand kiwi company (founded in 1897 by an England-born immigrant to New Zealand) started marketing their fruit as the kiwi in the US in 1959. This was presumably to get a leg up on their Chinese competitors and to associate the fruit with New Zealand instead of with China.
- Taniwha 6y agoI lived in the US for 20 years, it's home as much as NZ is. It was their American marketing manager who changed the name