With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1254353
Resorts. The company, which has two full-time staff and a handful of con- tractors, plans to hire a third employee this year. Suter also launched Huha, a line of anti-bacteria, anti-odour under- wear, on Kickstarter last October. She has since raised some $31,000 and sold more than 1,300 pairs of undies. With COVID-19 pushing up demand for "loungewear," Huha has been approached for partnership by a large (secret!) wholesale platform. –A.H. J E S S S T E R N B E R G AGE: 29 Co-founder + CEO, Free Label Clothing LIFE STORY: Other than making dresses for school fashion shows, Jess Sternberg had no technical sewing or design skills before founding Free Label Clothing, a made-in- Canada, ethical apparel brand. With a BA in English literature from McGill University, Sternberg taught in South Korea for a year before returning to her home in Toronto in 2014, taking a job as a buyer for a now-closed boutique that specialized in activewear made in Canada. "I was having trouble finding Canadian-made clothing I would wear," she remembers. "I asked the owner: If I were to make my own clothes, could I sell them here?" He agreed, and soon Sternberg had a women's top being fabricated in a Toronto factory. The shirt was a hit, and Free Label was born. Based in Vancouver since 2016, Sternberg and her co-founder and now-husband, Julian Hoyle, work with local factories and garment industry creatives to produce the brand's pieces, 90 percent of which are sold online. BOTTOM LINE : Free Label has doubled its revenue every year, passing the $500,000 mark in 2019. This year, Sternberg plans to change course by producing smaller runs of items with the aim of selling them out quickly, so there's no leftover stock. "In this way…we are left with no wastage," she explains, noting that she anticipates some lower profits on the horizon. With the COVID-19 pandemic, Sternberg says Free Label's comfy casualwear complements the new work-from-home reality. The spring line, which debuted online in mid- March, at the start of the outbreak in Canada, was the company's most suc- cessful launch to date. –J.N.W. E R I N J O S E P H Y AGE: 29 Co-founder + managing partner, Kismet Industries LIFE STORY: Entrepreneurship is ingrained in Erin Josephy's life story. Her grandparents immigrated to Canada from Europe–grandpa from Germany, grandma from Holland– and started a small family farm in Quesnel. With her parents' help, the business grew into a plant nursery, landscaping company and golf course. Josephy graduated from Thompson Rivers University with a bachelor in business in 2013 and ran a franchise through Student Works Painting for three summers. By 2016, she wanted "to start my own brand from scratch, something that didn't exist before," she explains. Recognizing a gap in the self-care products industry, Josephy and her life and business partner, Paul Baluch, founded Kismet Industries, offering all- natural items–bath salts, scrubs and mists–handcrafted in Vancouver and sold at an accessible price. The com- pany "was started on the idea that you should be able to pick up a product and understand the ingredients," she says. BOTTOM LINE : Kismet offers a product catalogue of 10 items avail- able at more than 400 retail locations in Canada and the U.S., including Anthropologie, Hudson's Bay, Indigo Books & Music and Whole Foods Market. The business, which has sold some 100,000 units, has posted 200-percent average annual growth since its founding. –J.N.W. K A Y L E E A S T L E AGE: 29 Director of operations + finance, Spocket Founder, MobSquad LIFE STORY: Saskatoon-born Kaylee Astle spent her formative years being homeschooled in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Her entrepreneurial parents–dad was a financial planner, mom an interior designer–retired early and moved Astle and her sister to the Baja Peninsula. An internship at SAP Canada during her commerce degree at UBC Sauder School of Business prompted her interest in "the way technology is transforming organiza- tions," she remembers. Following two years at profes- sional services firm Deloitte, Astle was drawn to the startup world. She and two other Sauder alumni founded MobSquad, a Calgary-based business that brings top technology talent to Canada. Though she remains an investor in and adviser to MobSquad, Astle returned to Vancouver and joined Spocket, an online dropship- ping retail solution that lets shop owners select from thousands of high-quality products and add them to their online stores with a few clicks. BOTTOM LINE : Founded in 2017, Spocket is on a mission to "create a million entrepreneurs," says Astle, who heads operations and finance. One female online retailer from Toronto makes more than six figures a month, she adds. Currently, 33,000 people operate online stores through Spocket. –J.N.W. ERIN JOSEPHY: CHRISTINE PIENAAR PHOTOGRAPHY JUNE 2020 BCBUSINESS 23 Jess Sternberg Erin Josephy Kaylee Astle