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RedSeed builds manager capability through a platform that combines coaching, structured learning and an AI coach, backed by a capability model it calls ARC.
RedSeed sells software that helps managers get better at the people part of the job: one-to-ones, difficult conversations, and coaching someone whose performance has slipped. Managers and the HR teams who support them use it, and businesses in retail, professional services, and local government buy it.
The product’s core is a set of tools for the conversations managers have with their teams. There are structures for one-to-ones, guidance for difficult conversations, and personalised learning that responds to the skills a manager is working on. A manager preparing for a hard conversation can work through it before they walk in, rather than improvising.
Alongside that sits Archie AI, an AI coach. A manager describes what is happening in their own words, and Archie helps them make sense of the situation, plan an approach and reflect afterwards. RedSeed positions it as a private place to think when nobody else is available, and as a complement to human coaching rather than a replacement for it. The company also publishes guidance on how it uses AI, framed around privacy and human judgement.
For HR, the platform offers a cross-team view without exposing private conversations. Managers are assessed against a capability framework, progress is reported, and the results are meant to show where development is working.
RedSeed’s capability framework is built around a cycle it calls ARC: assess, recommend, coach, repeat. Each manager starts with a baseline assessment against the RedSeed Manager Capability Framework. From there, the profile grows through self-review, 180 feedback, signals from real one-to-ones, engagement with learning content and interactions with Archie AI.
The point of the cycle is that development is not bet on a single annual assessment. The picture sharpens with every interaction, and recommendations narrow to the behaviours that matter most at that moment. Coaching then turns those behaviours into practice in real one-to-ones, and what happens there feeds back into the profile.
Anya Anderson co-founded RedSeed in Christchurch in 2009 and is its CEO. Anderson has spent 25 years on manager capability. She learned the craft inside retail as the sole HR practitioner across the Hallenstein Glasson group, building the sales training that ran in every store, then spent seven years consulting to businesses on sales and management training.
The company started with four people and one belief: training only matters if someone can do something different by the end. A year in, the Christchurch earthquakes put the team in a garage for two years. When they came out, the company was more resilient and more certain the work mattered.
The founders kept meeting the same manager: technically excellent, newly promoted, handed a team, and left to figure out the people part alone. Every business had them, and nobody helped when it got hard. Coaching had always been RedSeed’s strength, and the platform was built to put it where managers actually need it.
RedSeed earned its reputation in frontline and compliance training, where behaviour change improves outcomes. It developed its online learning ecosystem for large retailers, and tens of thousands of front-line staff have used it. In New Zealand retail, clients have included Farmers, Foodstuffs, Icebreaker, 2degrees, Kathmandu and Torpedo7.
The business now describes itself as a manager-to-leader platform, carrying forward the same founding purpose: confidence for managers and clarity for the HR teams backing them at scale. That shifts the emphasis from training front-line staff to building the people who lead them.
Bivouac Outdoor, which runs ten stores around New Zealand, partnered with RedSeed in 2018 to give its teams practical sales development that fitted a busy retail environment. The company introduced store managers to the platform first at its managers’ conference, and they made it their number-one priority for the year. When the programme rolled out nationally, store managers led the launch within their own stores.
Graeme Allen of Bivouac Outdoor said store managers were fully on board. Head office didn’t simply push development out; store managers owned it with their teams. Within three months, the business was seeing positive changes.
Weber, a retail business with more than 200 stores, is also a customer, using RedSeed to build confident, capable teams across its network.
RedSeed’s team of account managers, instructional designers, developers and marketers works across New Zealand and Australia, led by Anderson as co-founder and CEO. Chantale Harris heads accounts for Australia, and Alice Mullins leads marketing.
Punakaiki Fund holds the company and first invested in March 2015, owning 48.5 per cent. Punakaiki describes RedSeed as delivering coaching learning for retail and B2B sales clients, helping businesses coach their own teams to deliver better performance outcomes, with a coach-led approach integrated into the platform so leaders can help change behaviour and improve sales.
RedSeed has a mobile app that supports training and coaching meetings, including agendas and notes, and can record one-to-one sessions so it writes a summary automatically. It also runs a programme called Human Endeavour, leadership lessons from elite sport with Kieran Read, and publishes courses, quizzes and guides for people leaders.
The direction is clear: more of the manager’s working day inside the platform, and more coaching in one-to-ones turned into evidence HR can act on.
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