My wife and I have only begun to research emigrating to NZ from the US although we are quite serious. This is not some whim or wistful thinking. If we can get the visas and all the cards fall into place, we hope to be on the South Island by January. Please forgive me if I am asking questions that have already been answered on this forum--like I say I am just beginning to research this so haven't read even a fraction of the wealth of information available on this site and others.

#1) What's the story on a Work to Residence visa? Is that a practical option or a dead end? A preliminary check of our points towards a Skilled Migrants visa gave me 105, just over the threshold, but barely. Of course as everyone on this forum knows, if I just had a job offer (and both my wife's occupation and mine appear on the "list" so I am optimistic we can find work) my score would shoot up another 50 points and we'd be in. Am thinking a Work to Residence visa would give us a couple years to get established and find a job so that we could then apply for permanent residence. Again, is that a practical option or not?

#2) What we really want to do is move our existing business to NZ. Of course am looking at a business visa as well. Need to do some market research though to guage whether or not our business has a reasonable chance of success.

We own and operate a small wool mill that caters to individual producers of high value animal fibers. Sheep, alpaca, Mohair & angora. Also have been processing Brushy Tailed Possum we are currently importing from NZ. Would be very helpful to get in contact with animal fiber producers in NZ that would use the services of a custom processing facility as well as any fiber artists and guilds so that we could get a sense of the market.

After a preliminary & cursory websearch have not come up with any fiber guilds or crafters and the only producers I have found seem to be major operations producing mostly courser wools for things like carpet and upholstery. That is not our customer base.

Does anyone here have contacts in those fields with those sorts of producers & consumers? Thanks much for your attention to these questions.