BCBusiness

June 2020 – Thirty Under 30 | Invest in BC Special Report

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.

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B R A D E N P A R K E R AGE: 28 Co-founder + CEO, Casca Designs LIFE STORY: Everything changed for Braden Parker at age eight, when his family moved from Alberta to California so his father, a teacher, could do a sabbatical at Stanford University. This early brush with Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial culture left a deep impression. "People were inspired to go out and give it their best shot and swing hard, and not be afraid to fail," he recalls. After returning home, Parker earned a BComm in real estate at UBC Sauder School of Business and spent five years as a manager with Vancou- ver billionaire Chip Wilson's Low Tide Properties. In 2017, industrial designer Kevin Reid, a friend from university, approached him about creating the perfect everyday shoe. Seeing a gap in the athleisure market and a chance to shake up footwear, the pair worked with orthotic experts to create the Avro, which combines elements of hiking boots and runners with a timeless silhouette, Parker says. With a five-year guarantee to discourage fast fashion, the shoe also features 3D-printed insoles that buyers customize by scanning their feet with a mobile app. Casca Designs sells online, but late last year the startup took its first step toward a "factory retail" model by opening a Vancouver store with a scanning station and 3D printer. "I firmly believe that the future is going to be on-demand, custom and local," Parker says. "Eventually we'll reach the point where everyone's shoes are made perfectly fitted to them, with a design and quality that will last for a lot longer." BOTTOM LINE : In 2019, Casca raised US$3.5 million from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures. The 10-employee company also has strategic investors, includ- ing Shopify founder Tobias Lütke and Vancouver entrepreneur Alex Conconi. Casca, which started the year with healthy revenue growth, closed its store in March due to the pandemic. –N.R. B R O O K E J O H A N S E N AGE: 29 Co-owner, Park & Fifth Clothing Co. LIFE STORY: Brooke Johansen grew up in Port Coquitlam with her mother, father and younger sister. She graduated from SFU (coinci- dentally, where her parents met) with a degree in business in 2014, but starting one of her own wasn't top-of-mind: "I wanted to figure out how corporate internal businesses worked first," she says. Johansen started working as a junior shop director at Kit and Ace in Gastown when the Vancouver clothier was still very young–she was one of the first 50 employees. Making her way up to the product management team, she worked closely with Zoe Tisshaw, who later decided that being a cog in the corporate machine wasn't for her and asked Johansen to join her on an independent venture: Park & Fifth, a company focused on bridesmaid dresses. BOTTOM LINE : Johansen, Tisshaw and their business partner Jenny Wright-Harper now have three Park & Fifth stores, in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. They have 15 employees and hit more than $1 million in revenue in 2019. Park & Fifth makes bridesmaid dresses "that you don't just want to burn or throw away after," Johansen says. Last summer, the team launched a direct-to- consumer bridal line, and in the future they hope to open streetfront stores and create an extensive sample rental program. For now, Park & Fifth is relying heavily on its virtual fitting program, with offerings in three time zones. –A.H. A N I A W Y S O C K A AGE: 29 Founder, Rootd Program director, Alacrity Canada LIFE STORY: In her fourth year of an international relations degree at UBC, Ania Wysocka started suffering from panic attacks. For someone who had enjoyed public speaking and always saw herself working for 26 BCBUSINESS JUNE 2020 3 0 U N D E R T H I R T Y Brooke Johansen Braden Parker

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