Last week Drysdale won the supreme title at the 2008 World Class New Zealand Awards, beating off award winners of individual sectors.

The award was somewhat of a surprise, says Drysdale but the involvement of Kiwi Expat Association (Kea NZ) co-founder Stephen Tindall (of the Warehouse) reminded her of support at a pivotal moment in her business career.

Untouched World's lines, based on organic cotton and merino, are sold through five retail shops in New Zealand.

Around 1999 Drysdale remembers she was struggling to meet a deadline for choosing and funding an Auckland-based retail site.

Admitting she was nervous about whether it was a good site Tindall said he would get his retail team to look at it.

"I (also) said to him I'm worried the jolly thing is going to slip out of our fingers and he just got his chequebook out and wrote me out a half-million-dollar cheque and handed it to me," she remembers.

The site went to someone else and Untouched World paid the unsecured sum - which had been handed over on "intuitive trust" - back to Tindall a few days later.

"We're heading into online now ... we've actually got our UK team down with us at the moment, and we're just arguing about the go live date," Drysdale says.

"Like all good-sizeable projects it's running about three weeks behind but we're looking (at a launch) about April 7."