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/1501233
56 BCBUSINESS.CA JULY/AUGUST 2023 3 3 UNDER S U K H M A N J I T S I N G H S I D H U AGE: 26 Founder and CEO, Blackbuck Logistics Inc. LIFE STORY: For Sukhmanjit Sidhu, the decision to launch an entrepreneurial venture in transporta- tion came naturally. Sidhu was raised by a family of entrepreneurs in India's Punjab state: his grandfather and father had their hands in a number of endeavours, including a mechan- ics shop, a trucking business and a brick-making operation. When the younger Sidhu came to B.C. in 2015 to study business management at Douglas College, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life. But soon after graduation, he landed in trans- portation through a dispatching job with Surrey's S.B. Trucking, eventually moving his way up into customer relations and account sales. "Once I felt like I couldn't learn any more by staying with the company, that's when I decided to do my own thing," Sidhu says. That thing—Blackbuck Logis- tics—is a Surrey-based company that offers transportation solutions to agri- cultural producers across Canada and the United States. "We are essentially a freight brokerage company," he explains. "If there's a farm that needs their goods to be transported from one place to another—say, from their farm to a distribution centre or retailer—our job is to hire the trucking companies and, if they need product stored for a certain time, arrange the warehouse space." (Blackbuck has deals with over 200 trucking companies, most of which are B.C.-based.) Sidhu says the Blackbuck advantage is its sophisticated logistics software, which allows for real-time tracking of shipments, as well as digital documentation of all the relevant taxes, charges and certifications. BOTTOM LINE : When Black- buck launched in 2021, it had just two employees and revenues of $147,000; a year later, those numbers had jumped to 10 staff and revenues of $2.8 million, thanks largely to the addi- tion of two (big) new clients. Sidhu expects revenues to top $4 million in 2023. Looking ahead, Sidhu is also eyeing a move into last-mile delivery and buying his own five-tonne trucks as an inflation hedge: "Right now, we are fully dependent on subcon- tractors, and their prices keep going higher."–M.O. S C O T T M c T A V I S H AGE: 29 VP, strategy and corporate development, Purdys Chocolatier LIFE STORY: As the son and grandson of former Purdys Chocolatier CEOs Karen and Charles Flavelle, Scott McTavish doesn't beat around the (cocoa) bush. "I grew up with Purdys, it was very much a thing always around us," he recalls. "But our family values were not to be given things. From an early age, I was actively discouraged from getting involved at all." So, for a long while, he didn't. McTavish went to Queen's University and studied geological engineering before working for a few mining companies. He eventually became a senior associate for accounting giant PwC and maybe, in a different life, he would have stayed there happily ever after. In this one, COVID hit Purdys particularly hard, bringing with it a slew of executive turnover. Karen Flavelle stepped back into the driver's seat for the first time in 10 years, and after some tough conversa- tions, McTavish agreed to come on and help out for a couple months. "I found I was enjoying it and decided to keep pursuing that," he recalls. Soon, he was actively engaged in forming a process in which he would buy Purdys from his mother. "It's different from a lot of family businesses—independence and a sense of accomplishment are very important to us. It's actively harder on both of us to buy it as opposed to just giving it over. But it's something we want to pursue." Since coming on board at Purdys, McTavish has focused on streamlining the decision-making process as well as hiring a new executive team. He's also transforming the company's digital side, on which he says sales are up 60 percent since he began that work. In terms of production, the company is pushing toward a more diverse customer set with offerings that feature vegan items and celebra- tions around holidays like Raksha Bandhan. BOTTOM LINE : McTavish will formally start buying the company from Flavelle in the next six months in a process that he estimates will take around seven years to complete. The company has some 1,200 employees. –N.C.