Rainbow’s End

"In 1983 the partners had more audacious plans than major attractions. They were starting to think about floating their company on the New Zealand Stock Exchange. One of the drivers for listing was better access to capital. By now, with money coming in from both Tamaki Drive and Rainbow’s End, banks were willing to lend for the infrastructure costs associated with developments at the adventure park, but the cost of borrowing was high. If the company became public it could raise money in its own right."

"For Heatley, Rainbow’s End was the third successful new business in succession but he did not pause to congratulate himself. Each success became simply more momentum propelling him towards the next venture. He has no recall of ever walking around one of the mini-golf courses with a sense of pride but only ever of thinking, how can we make this better? What else should we do? ‘I never stopped long enough. In part, the male curse in life, in my opinion, is living in the future too much. We tell our sons, “Be strong, don’t cry, you need to be the breadwinner, you’ll be the one who provides for your family,” and all that. By definition those things are about the future, so subliminally males are taught to live in the future and I was an extreme example of that. I was always thinking about the future and never taking five minutes today to say, “Well, that’s pretty good.” It took me about 45 years to work this out. I was always running towards something bigger. And that was true right through the eighties.’ As a boy depositing his paper-round money in his Post Office savings account, he had chafed at how slowly his savings were accumulating. Now, having successful small companies was also not enough. He was looking for acceleration and his timing could not have been better."

"⁠By late 1983, the decision to take the company public was made. Rainbow Corporation was formed to buy the capital of Manawa Holdings Ltd, which in turn owned the separate companies running the Tamaki Drive site, Rainbow’s End and the Wet ‘n’ Wild water slides. But even with all three operations, Rainbow Corporation was tiny by the standard of publicly listed companies and it had been in operation only a short time. Studying Rainbow’s past performance could be done over a cup of tea. Nevertheless, the sharemarket was starting to move. There were 27 initial public offerings (IPOs) in 1983 and many of the new companies were doing well. Rainbow would be one of 31 local IPOs in 1984 and it would succeed beyond its founders’ most optimistic hopes.⁠"

"The leisure business was providing a healthy cashflow but Heatley was already looking farther afield. While one of the main reasons for floating had been to raise money to pay back high-interest borrowings, in the back of his mind he had hoped that if the park was successful it would embolden his colleagues to consider other investments. He and the other directors knew that the leisure industry had a natural cap in a city with a relatively small population. It was hard to see what more could be wrung out of Rainbow’s End. In July 1986 the leisure side of the business was split off as Questar Corporation, which planned to look offshore for further sporting/leisure and tourism opportunities. It was majority-owned by Rainbow but listed separately on the stock exchange. An ill-fated foray into commercial property, Rainbow Properties, which developed the Majestic Centre in downtown Wellington, was also spun off from Rainbow with Ken Wikeley as managing director."