BCBusiness

March/April 2022 – The Business of Good

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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WARRIOR SPOTLIGHT Guy Dean is president and general manager of Richmond-based Organic Ocean Seafood. The com- pany emphasizes a healthy, thriving aquatic environ- ment. "The pandemic was really tough for us," Dean says of Organic Ocean's 17 employees. "In March 2020, we lost 75 percent of our business, because our primary business was selling to top chefs around Canada and the world." In response to the decline in restaurant sales, the company reinvented itself with an online fish market geared toward home deliv- ery. "That has taken on a life of its own–it's now an- other arm of our business," Dean explains. "We've been overwhelmed at the support we get by custom- ers across Canada." –N.C. MOUNTAIN MAN He's skied all over the world, but Dean says the peaks in B.C. are the best O FF T H E C LO C K ( quality time ) T here's a particular rule in Guy Dean's household that all four members of the family are fond of. "If it snows more than 20 centimetres in Whistler on a weekday, the kids can take school off, and we'll go ski," says the president of Organic Ocean Seafood with a chuckle. Suffice it to say that Dean— who has spent the better part of half a century skiing—has been successful in converting his daughters (aged 10 and 12) to his favourite hobby. The 58-year-old found his passion for the sport growing up in Cal- gary, where "you either played hockey or skied or did both. And I never learned to skate." When Dean was in high school, his family moved to Courtenay, where he became a regular at nearby Mount Wash- ington. He didn't have quite the same access to snow-covered peaks when, after graduat- ing from UBC with a degree in marine zoology, he moved to Japan to become a commercial diver. "I lived in a subtropical area in Japan—the southern- most main island," Dean recalls of his time on Kyushu. Though he did manage to get in some runs on the island of Hokkaido, the time mostly away from the snowcaps only endeared him to the activity. "I wasn't around snow for seven years. When I came back, I couldn't believe how much I MARCH/APRIL 2022 BCBUSINESS 55 ADAM BLASBERG W E E K E N D WA R R IOR Pole Position Snow calls Organic Ocean president Guy Dean and his family to the slopes by Nathan Caddell

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