Running a New Zealand business from a tiny Tuscan village.
Here is what I have learned.
I have wanted to live in Italy for over twelve years. Not visit. Live. There is a difference most travellers don't fully appreciate until they've tried it, and I was no exception.
In June 2025, I packed up my Auckland life and moved to Italy, roaming around until I found the perfect apartment in a quiet village tucked into the hills outside Florence. Population: not many. Olive trees and vineyards: plenty. Wi-Fi: functional, mostly.
NZ Charly came with me, in the only way a small New Zealand business can when its founder moves to the other side of the world. Everything kept happening in New Zealand. The manufacturing, the orders, the courier pickups, the wool. I just wasn't there to see any of it.
Travel and living somewhere are two very different things. I knew this. I just didn't know exactly how different until I was standing in the local Commune office trying to understand why I wasn't allowed to buy a car. In Italian.
My days here have a rhythm I didn't expect. At first it was tough. The change of pace, the slow mornings with long chats before people got into their workday. This was probably the biggest adjustment for me. I am someone who loves to heap as much as possible onto my plate and then add a little more just for the fun of it. So slowing down, not having all my normal distractions, tasks, hobbies and extracurriculars, was genuinely strange. It took a good six months for my nervous system to adjust. To learn to sit and enjoy the view without an internal alarm bell ringing, telling me I should be off doing something purely because I didn't feel productive.
Now my mornings are for yoga at home, Italian lessons and coffee with friends. Class, study, and sometimes walking around attempting actual conversations with actual people who seem to have infinite patience for my mistakes. The language is everything I hoped it would be and harder than I thought. Afternoons are mine. Walks between the vines, research, or learning. Evenings are for New Zealand.
By the time I sit down to emails and Zoom calls, Auckland is already well into its working day. There is something clarifying about that. The eleven-hour gap means I can't be reactive. I can't hover. I have to trust the people and the systems I have put in place, check in properly once a day, and then close the laptop. And yes, while I have full trust in my people, it's odd not being there, not being part of it.
The hardest part has not been the time zone. It has been the distance from the making. NZ Charly is a physical thing. Fibre, weight, warmth, the particular way a possum merino piece feels when you hold it. I know every yarn we use. I know how each finished garment should drape. Being removed from that, not being able to pick something up and feel whether it is right, has been the part I genuinely grieve some days.
What I have not been short of, though, is proof that the pieces do exactly what they are supposed to. I packed two of my favourite jumpers for this adventure. The Sports Stripe in Kiwi and the Cropped Crew in Tangerine. They have not left the rotation.
The Sports Stripe got me through a Tuscan winter I was not prepared for. The hills around Florence are cold in a way that surprises you. The built-up turtleneck on that piece is soft enough to wear all day without a second thought, and warm enough that I never needed to reach for anything else. It is the jumper I have worn most in my life, and I packed it for Italy without hesitation. I adore the brown, the way it makes me feel connected to the land here, the way it goes with everything. My new favourite outfit is a caramel silk bias skirt, whatever tee is currently available, and my Sports Stripe. Styled with a belt, good shoes and a bag. The Italian women have taught me that accessories are everything. And I truly feel more alive by putting that ten percent more thought into my daily dressing.
The Tangerine Cropped Crew is the other jumper I packed. Lighter, brighter and better for curated outfits. Saturday mornings here mean the local weekly market, a wander through the stalls with white jeans and good shoes, and that piece is perfect for exactly that. The colour holds its own against Italian sunshine in a way that feels almost deliberate.
I miss the physical product in my hands more than I expected to. That is not a small thing when the whole point of what you make is how it feels.
What distance has given me in return is perspective. When you are not inside the daily machinery of the business, you start to see it differently. You notice what actually matters and what you were just doing out of habit. You think more clearly about where you want to take it. Italy has given me a lot of that kind of thinking time, and I don't think I would have found it any other way.
Something else has happened that I didn't anticipate. A few friends have watched what I am doing here and decided to go after their own version of it. One is planning a move. Another finally booked the trip they had been putting off for years. And I think sometimes seeing someone else do the thing is the only proof you need that it is actually possible.
So if you have been sitting on something, a place you want to live, a language you want to learn, something you keep almost doing and then not quite doing, I want to be straightforward with you. The timing is never going to be perfect. The business will not pause while you figure it out. The life you are waiting for is not waiting for you to be ready.
You just have to go.
NZ Charly is still here. Still made in New Zealand, still packed by hand, still deeply committed to everything it has always stood for. The founder is just doing her homework in Italian first.
Charlotte x