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/1471305
READ THIS What could be a better fit for our Top 100 issue than a book in which Canadian executives wax poetic about leadership during the pandemic? In Unprecedented: Canada's Top CEOs on Leadership During COVID-19, Steve Mayer and Andrew Willis gather 29 first-person stories from those at the top of some of the country's biggest (and most vulnerable) corporations. Dragons' Den host Michele Romanow authors the foreword, while many B.C. executives found time to contribute, including Telus's Darren Entwistle, Nature Path's Ratana Stephens and Lululemon's Calvin McDonald. The book serves up as apt a lesson as you'll find on crisis management. Penguin Random House Canada Limited 528 pages, hardcover, $42.00 £ That's when Adams posed the question: Why don't we do everything here in Canada? His partners at Nobl weren't interested, so he soon left that business to pursue his vision of launching a company that designed and built composite wheels in Canada. But when he started approaching banks for financing, the doors slammed almost as fast as he could open them: "Nobody would give me any money." Still, Adams was convinced that if he got his hands dirty and fully understood the material and process of moulding carbon fibre into wheels, he could do it better—and make money. As a young biker, he'd been inspired by brands like Quebec-based Devinci, the now-defunct but legendary B.C.-built Balfa bikes and Rocky Mountain, when the company was still making its own frames in Vancouver. At first, the only people who believed in the idea were his machinist and his first engineer, a Scotsman named Fraser Andrews whom he met through bike industry con- nections and who was looking for a project after a gig with Rolls-Royce. So he mortgaged the house and dove in. His wife eventually came around—she even named the business. Though he took a leap of faith, Adams's gut instinct was spot-on. We Are One released its flagship wheel, The Agent, in 2017. Since then, sales have grown between 100 and 130 percent annually. The company, which now has a fleet of five rim models, last year introduced its first carbon fibre bike frame, The Arrival, to critical acclaim. "When we launched our first bike, we got a lot of atten- tion," says Adams, a father of 10- and 12-year-old boys. "We've grown a lot over the past one- and-a-half years." We Are One now produces four bike frames per day, with two more models in the works and another two on the horizon. In June, the company moved into a 25,000-square-foot facil- ity in Kamloops that will enable a boost in production from 100 to 300 bike rims per day. Adams says he'll grow his staff from 86 to 120 by the end of the year. There's a serendipity to his business inspiration. Labour costs have traditionally been the big driver for offshore manufac- turing, but a growing middle class in China has put upward pressure on wages in that coun- try. Another business case for the reshoring of manufacturing: supply chain unreliability and disruption, which have been magnified during the pandemic. It's prompting people in the outdoor equipment sector to ask: does it still make sense to offshore manufacturing to third-party factories on the other side of the ocean? Kevin Pennock, executive director of the Kootenay Out- door Recreation Enterprise ( KORE), doesn't think so. "What Dustin Adams has accom- plished in Kamloops with We Are One Composites proves that onshoring of outdoor gear manufacturing in British Co- lumbia is not only possible but can also be highly competitive with Asia," says Pennock, who's leading the effort at KORE to support and grow outdoor gear brands in the Kootenays. Pennock believes the success of We Are One "validates" one of KORE's main initiatives, called KORE Reshore. "It's basically to advocate and facilitate outdoor rec-tech manufacturing in the Kootenay region of B.C." Adams is also shaking up the design-here-build-overseas model at a pivotal time, when the carbon footprint of business is under the microscope. "We have a 500-mile diet for our company," he says, adding that nearly all of the raw materials used to build its bike frames come from within that radius. We Are One's motto— "Fighting to keep it local"—says it all. "People want to connect with a product that has a strong local story, and I think we have a unique story," Adams asserts. £ ( the informer ) G O F I G U R E Pet Project Pet-a-palooza returns to Victoria (Aug. 13+14) and Vancouver (Aug. 28) this summer, so we're celebrating the four-legged friends who kept B.C. company during lockdown—and the pawprint they've made on how we live, work and spend by Melissa Edwards 49% of British Columbian households have at least one pet 18% of British Columbians added a new pet to their household during the first 8 months of the pandemic TOTAL PET POPULATION IN CANADA (2021): 28,100,000 In a 2021 survey, 41% of Canadian dog owners said they would consider taking a lower salary in return for a workplace with dog-friendly benefits said a dog-friendly workplace was important have put their dog on camera during a virtual work meeting # of "dog-friendly" B.C. jobs found on an April search of Indeed.ca: 305 "Cat friendly": 1 PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE 18 BCBUSINESS JULY/AUGUST 2022 62% DOG 78% 33% 56% CAT 13% FISH 3% BIRD 8% OTHER