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
JULY/AUGUST 2022 BCBUSINESS 51 TOP: RAY MCEACHERN C H R I S R E E D AGE: 29 Co-founder, Queer Based Media LIFE STORY: There are fish out of water stories, and then there's what Chris Reed experienced growing up in Sherwood Park, Alberta: "I lived in a white suburban oil town and went to a Catholic junior high. I'm Indigenous and very queer." Unsurprisingly, it wasn't the best mix—even as, according to Reed, their sisters and parents were supportive. About 10 years ago, Reed moved to Vancouver and spent some time in construction before getting work as a comedian and an actor. After a bout with alcoholism, Reed got sober and found that his need for social interaction wasn't being best served in bars and clubs. "I started going to drag shows, where I could just go, watch and sit, and not neces- sarily have to mingle at the bar," Reed says. "I could just go and engage with art while being at this social event and then leave afterwards. "At the time, I was doing comedy and performing mostly for cisgender hetero people. But when I went to drag shows, I realized that these artists were doing comedy as well, just for a queer audience. So I started doing drag." Reed became known in the Van- couver drag community as Continen- tal Breakfast and joined a non-binary drag collective called The Darlings. Reed also co-founded Queer Based Media, a production company that does videography, photography and design for queer creators. BOTTOM LINE: Queer Based Media works with some 35 clients a year and a boatload of contractors. "I thought to myself, What if there was a company that just didn't work for straight people?" says Reed with a laugh. "And it sounds kind of harsh, but there's just not enough accessible media for queer performance artists right now. Ru Paul's Drag Race isn't the epitome of queer culture, there's so much more to it." –N.C. Chris Reed S T E P H A N I E H U E N AGE: 29 Co-founder + CEO, Plenish LIFE STORY: Helping people always came first for Stephanie Huen. When she was young, she thought the best way to do that would be as a forensic scientist, but that vision quickly morphed into social work while she was pursuing an economics and sociology degree at UBC. In 2014, Huen volunteered with Mount Pleasant-Kep Health Initia- tive, a local social service organiza- tion, to help rebuild communities in Kep, Cambodia. From there, she went on to work in Hong Kong on a co-op placement, and then travelled to Singapore in 2016 as an exchange student. She was still trying to figure out how she could make a clear dif- ference in people's daily lives. A year later, Huen found herself wondering why she wasn't helping people in her own country. She returned to Vancouver in 2017 to join the federal government's economic department, providing support and funding to disadvantaged businesses and people. The entrepreneurs she served inspired her and, in 2020, the entrepreneur in Huen won when she launched Plenish, a furniture subscription company in Vancouver, with her friend and co-founder Chang Li. "I saw the direct impact I was making for people's households and homes," says Huen. "That's why I'm here today." BOTTOM LINE : Vancouver- based Plenish partners with Canadian retailers and lists their products on its own website. The company takes care of furniture delivery and assem- bly to create a hassle-free experience for clients and also offers options to buy items out at retail prices, swap them for others, or rent them for a monthly fee. "We're essentially trying to reduce the amount of furniture waste that's going to landfills each year," adds Huen, who's guided Plenish through 600 percent growth in sales and 120 percent growth in customers over this past year. With seven team members on board, the company has rented thousands of furniture pieces to homes and busi- nesses throughout Metro Vancouver and Toronto. –R.R. n Stephanie Huen