Charity Tycer’s Journey to Building the Ultimate Adventure Vehicle

Charity Tycer is the co-founder and COO of AWOL, New Zealand’s first adventure utility vehicle company. 

AWOL recognises there’s a gap in the market in that most vehicles don’t meet the needs of adventurous people. SUVs, Utes and RVs may be handy for cities, farms and easy-going tourism, respectively, but they’re not suited to wild weekends spent mountain biking, fishing or exploring New Zealand’s wild side. 

Enter the Adventure Utility Vehicle. Designed to be tough and spacious, and suitable for all terrain types. 

Startup Queenstown Lakes talked to Charity about why AWOL was founded and how the local startup community has helped to propel the business forward.

Picture: The ‘Beasty’, AWOL’s Adventure Utility Vehicle in New Zealand.

SQL: Tell us about AWOL and how you got started   

Charity: At AWOL, we’re building an ‘AUV’ (Adventure Utility Vehicle). The AUV takes a 4X4 Sprinter van, which gives us a large volume with a medium wheel base that enables it to be parked in a standard parking space. It has an all-drive chassis, which we modify to make it completely 4X4 with recovery points, and upgraded suspension and tyres. 

This means you have the off-road capacity of a Ute, with the volume of a van. This increases your options exponentially compared to a standard Ute or SUV. You can stand up in it, live in it, carry a bunch of people in it, lock up and store your bikes in it… and you have complete weather tightness (which a tent never has). We’ve achieved this by creating a modular system so that you can configure the van according to your needs at the time. It creates an element of customisation, as opposed to being bespoke, which is out of most people’s reach. 

Vehicles like this aren’t uncommon in North America and they’re taking off in Europe. And I guess our question was: why? Why doesn’t New Zealand have something like this on offer? The answer is that compliance with safety regulations is more difficult here, and I don’t think anyone else has had the guts to take the risk and make it happen. 

SQL: How did you get involved with Startup Queenstown Lakes?

Charity: I attended a women in business event. My daughter has a lot of interest in startups and we went along together because I knew she’d be interested. So the two of us went along and felt really inspired. My daughter went back to university, but I continued to go to more events. Jinene was really helpful and pointed me in the direction of people who make things (as opposed to software). Because most of those people were here in Wānaka, we were able to make lots of great connections in the community. Jinene has been a great support through events, networking, understanding what we need and how to get it – she has a vast knowledge base.

Picture: Charity (second from right) speaking on a panel at an SQL Women Entrepreneurs event

SQL: How have these connections with the SQL community impacted your business?

Charity: Sometimes you just need support! Sometimes you just need to tell someone else what you know you need to do, for you to hear that you need to do it. 

I can also directly correlate the connections we’ve made through SQL with how we brought on our first founder. Jinene provided me with the connection I needed to find someone who can do a whole bunch of our prototyping, and they’ve since come on board as one of our founders. We would never have found this person if we hadn’t had those connections into the startup ecosystem. 

SQL: What is next for you and your business?

Charity: Well, we've just started taking orders and are working with our customers to develop our very first vans. We will be starting production towards the end of this year. We have a bit of a lag time as we have to get chassis from Germany.

There's a lot of learning to be done in that first stage because we’ve built a prototype, but we haven't built a production line yet. So that's the next stage – getting this thing to be manufacturable, repeatable, efficient and fit for the customers’ needs. It's so important to focus on what the customer's needs are – because that’s what creates a great business. 

SQL: Why did you decide to start your business in the Queenstown Lakes district? 

Charity: Let’s face it, Queenstown Lakes is the centre of adventure… everywhere! It’s world-renowned. You can’t think of adventure without thinking about Queenstown. 

But also, from the perspective of if we want to move into the Australian market, it’s a no-brainer. If you want to build an adventure-based business, if you want to support adventure and if you want to find people who love adventure, you go to the adventure capital of the world.  

SQL: How would you describe SQL in one word?

Charity: Supportive. 

The journey to starting a business is one of the hardest things a person can decide to do with their life. It’s unbelievably challenging on every level: financially, emotionally, relationship-wise and health-wise. And it’s extremely lonely. So, having a group of people like Startup Queenstown Lakes, whose job it is to try to support you through that, is a social good. 

Story written by Startup Queenstown Lakes