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
BCBUSINESS.CA JUNE 2020 BCBUSINESS 25 M I C H E L L E T R A N AGE: 28 Co-founder, Meraki Beauty Bar LIFE STORY: Michelle Tran's first "job" was serving frozen yogurt at the Yogen Früz franchise her father owned. "I was seven years old, and I was too short–my dad would put down pineapple cans so I could stand on top and serve people," she recalls. Tran's parents were both refugees from Vietnam, and she attributes much of her and her younger sister, Jenny's, work ethic to observing their father, who was also an optical tech- nician, and her mother, who sewed. "I watched my parents work really, really hard," she says. "They taught me that family is everything." In high school, Tran dipped her toes into the beauty business by making some cash doing nails for other girls before prom. She and Jenny opened Meraki Beauty Bar, a one-stop beauty shop, in Burnaby in 2016. BOTTOM LINE : Meraki Beauty Bar, which has more than 300 five- star reviews, has won Burnaby Now's Best Lash Care and Best Brow Bar awards. The business now has a team of 21 aestheticians, and Tran has started her own education program that focuses on post-graduation guidance. Five out of every six Meraki students continue to pursue makeup. Closed during COVID-19, Meraki is keeping afloat by selling delivery prod- ucts. Looking further ahead, Tran's goal is to expand into Southeast Asia. "I would love to have some sort of program where people would get Meraki Beauty membership cards and go to locations all over the world," she says. –A.H. M I K A E L L A G O + T O N Y Y U AGES: 29 Co-founders, Vessi Footwear LIFE STORY: When Mikaella Go met Tony Yu at a restaurant in Vancouver's Yaletown, she didn't realize that she would spend the next six years of her life as a serial entrepreneur. Work- ing as a City of Richmond lifeguard at the time, Go was training to be a teacher. "But when we first started dating, he already had the idea for his first product, and it was all he wanted to talk about," Go says of Nanotips, a liquid solution that gives any glove touchscreen capabilities." He said, 'Do you want to do this as a side project? Let's make a couple thousand dollars.' Our goal was to make $5,000 so we could buy a motorcycle." Sure, it's not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but Nanotips ended up getting funded on Kickstarter (to the tune of $72,000), and Go and Yu successfully subsidized more than 10 other busi- nesses on the site. So when mutual friend Andy Wang approached them about an idea for comfortable, light and waterproof sneakers, the two quickly hopped on board. Vessi (Finn- ish for "water") was born, and the brand easily surpassed its $25,000 Kickstarter campaign, earning just over $1.25 million from some 9,000 online backers. BOTTOM LINE : Vessi, which operates fully online, expects to hit over a million pairs of shoes sold this year. There were plans to open some brick-and-mortar stores in 2020, but COVID-19 derailed those. The company has donated over 2,000 pairs of shoes to health-care workers, along with some 400,000 masks. –N.C. J E N N I F E R Z H A N G AGE: 29 CEO + principal, Concrete Cashmere LIFE STORY: The daughter of an entrepreneur, Beijing-born Jennifer Zhang grew up in White Rock after moving to B.C. when she was 10. She had no interest in going into business with her engineer dad, who exports machinery from Europe to China. Completing an interior design diploma at the Art Institute of Vancouver in 2013, she helped grow a small design- build outfit, getting thrown into project management and sales. But Zhang wanted to build her own company. So in 2016, having built a network of real estate industry contacts–brokers, developers and landlords–she co-founded Concrete Cashmere. The Vancouver-based design-build firm specializes in full-service tenant improvements for commercial spaces, from layout to construction to furniture. Bringing interior design and general contract- ing under one roof helps avoid delays and cost overruns, Zhang explains. Eleven members of her 16-member team are female: "We work really well together, and as women in a male-dominated industry, we get a lot of respect." BOTTOM LINE : Concrete Cashmere, whose customers include Bosa Properties, CBRE Group, Colliers International and Westbank Corp., grew its revenue 122 percent last year, to $8 million. Before COVID-19, Zhang's three-year plan was to double the size of the team and hit the $18-million mark. "That's still the goal, once this is all over," she says. Zhang, who has made many connections in Toronto and the U.S. through her real estate broker clients, also aims to expand the business across Canada and stateside. –N.R. Michelle Tran Jennifer Zhang Tony Yu + Mikaella Go