From purpose to impact – Dansy’s story

From purpose to impact – Dansy’s story

Dansy Coppell will tell you she is not the polished spokesperson type. She will say she has sometimes made it up as she went along. She will say she is a behind the scenes person – at her laptop, writing emails, filming videos, building systems, and figuring it all out.

Then you meet her, and you realise that this is exactly the point.

Because what Dansy has built alongside her husband Greg, is not a brand story designed in a boardroom. It is a lived story – a family story, a rural story, and an innovation story. It’s the kind of story that makes other women pause and think, maybe I can do this too.

Dansy is the winner of the Innovation Award at the 2024 NZI Rural Women NZ Business Awards. She is also a graduate of AWDT Next Level, and the kind of leader who proves that impact does not need to be loud to be real.

A problem nobody wanted to look at

Dansy and Greg’s business Repost exists because of a problem hiding in plain sight.

All around Aotearoa, vineyards and orchards have mountains of broken CCA treated timber posts with plenty of life left in them. They languish in the back corners of properties because disposal is hard, expensive, and often avoided. Repost is a practical, scalable answer to that waste challenge, recovering and repurposing discarded posts and turning them into durable, affordable fencing materials for farms, lifestyle blocks, and gardens.

This is circular economy thinking at its best. Not as a concept, but as something you can pick up, load on a trailer, and put back to work. And at its heart is something even simpler. Repost was never just about turning waste into profit. It was a problem that needed solving, and a farming family determined to solve it in a way that served people and place.

A business, built with grit

In the early days, Dansy and Greg had to explain the value of Repost everywhere they went. They would walk into a winery and talk about taking “value back out of the waste”, and people would look at them like they were speaking another language. Education was necessary, constant, and exhausting.

They were trying to build trust in a space where no one quite knew where Repost fitted. They were creating a market while also trying to survive it. And at the same time, Dansy and Greg were raising young children. They were holding the farm together and carrying the weight of debt and responsibility that so many rural families know intimately.

Dansy remembers what it felt like to sit at the kitchen table thinking, ‘how are we going to do this?’ That moment matters, because it shaped how Repost would operate – selling to people just like them, who needed a fair price and a practical solution.

That is why Repost is not only a sustainability story. It is also a story about resilience story.

Quiet leadership that keeps the wheels turning

When Repost began, the strategy was simple. Greg would be the face. A farmer selling to farmers. It made sense, and it worked. And behind that visible front, Dansy was building the engine.

She set up the accounts. She taught herself what she did not know. She created social channels with no budget and no formal training, just determination and a willingness to try. She sent the “long shot” emails anyway. She kept going when no one replied.

This is leadership from within.

Not the kind that stands at the front of the room, but the kind that keeps showing up. The kind that spots gaps and finds a way through them. The kind that holds the long view while everyone else is focused on the next urgent task.

It is also leadership shaped by empathy.

Dansy talks about giving the Repost team members autonomy. About trusting them to get the work done with the flexibility to fit around their lives, especially when someone has a new baby, or a season of pressure, or a lot going on at home. It’s not a nine to five mindset – it’s a human one.

And it works, because her people feel they are part of something, not just employed by it.

The moment it clicked

Like many small businesses, Repost reached a point where the hardest part was not the product. It was being understood.

Then came the tipping points.

Winning awards brought confidence and credibility. Repost has been recognised across the sector, including winning the 2025 South Island Agricultural Field Days Agri Innovation Award, and earlier recognition through environmental awards.

Media exposure helped too. Their Country Calendar episode put the story into living rooms around the country, showing a farming family building a business that salvages broken vineyard posts and recycles them for farm fences.

Dansy calls Country Calendar a game changer, because after that, the explaining eased. People could see the quality. They could see the scale. They could see the need. The story landed, and trust followed.

When purpose comes first

One the most powerful observations from our chat with Dansy is this: Most companies start with a business, then retrofit a purpose. Repost started with purpose, then built a business around it.

You can feel this in the way they show up in the community. In flood recovery work, Dansy and Greg pushed for practical support that would reach the people who truly needed it, and they worked to reduce costs rather than add margin. That instinct, to do what is right even when it would be easier not to, is part of what makes Repost different.

It also comes with a cost.

As the business has grown, the family’s farm has felt the strain. Time and energy have limits. Trade-offs are real. Guilt shows up too, even when the wider whānau is proud. Dansy holds all of this honestly, and that honesty is part of what makes her story land with such force.

Next Level and claiming her own voice

Dansy describes much of her work as lonely. A room, a laptop, and a long list of decisions no one sees. Then she did something that changed her internal story.

She invested in her learning, starting with a leadership programme that put her in rooms with people she once thought were “the big fish”, and then taking the next step with AWDT Next Level. For Dansy, Next Level was not just about tools or frameworks. It was about voice. It helped her see what she brings to the table. It helped her name her strengths, her understand her why, and how that why is distinct from Greg’s, even though they are building the same business together.

It gave her a mirror, and a community, and a reminder that she belongs in the conversations shaping the future of food and fibre.

The award that asked the right questions

When Dansy applied for the NZI Rural Women NZ Business Awards, she expected the process to be intense. What she did not expect was how transformative it would be.

The application forced her to step back and articulate her value, her impact, her leadership, and her choices. It made her look at what Repost had achieved, and what she had achieved, not just as part of a couple or a family, but as an individual.

And then she won the Innovation Award. Because what she has built is real, and it matters.

The words she would tell her younger self

If Dansy could go back to the version of herself before Repost, before Next Level, before the awards, she would keep it simple”: You’ve got this.

And she would add one more truth that many women need to hear – do not carry the weight of what other people think. The right people will lift you. The rest were never meant to hold your story.

Why this story matters

AWDT is proud to support the Rural Women’s Business Awards this year, because stories like Dansy’s change what feels possible.

They show that innovation does not always arrive with funding, polish, and a perfect plan. Sometimes it arrives with a family around a kitchen table, a problem that will not go away, and a woman quietly building the engine behind the scenes, one brave decision at a time.

Dansy’s story is a reminder that leadership can look like grit. Like empathy. Like persistence. Like trusting your people. Like staying true to your purpose when the road gets messy.

And sometimes, it looks like this. Taking waste and returning it to the world as worth.