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/1510895
44 BCBUSINESS.CA NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023 E N T R E P R E N E U R O F T H E Y E A R 2 0 2 3 F I N A L I S T S Moe Samieian Jr. + Sara Samieian C O - C E O S , M O E ' S H O M E C O L L E C T I O N n T H E K I C K O F F : "Our dad put full trust in us from a very young age," says Sara Samieian—in response to which her brother jokes: "Maybe too young." Moe Jr. may have been the only one to inherit their father's name, but the siblings have equal reign over Moe's Home Collection, the Vancouver-based B2B furniture retailer founded by Moe Sr. in 1986. His kids officially became co- CEOs six years ago, but they've been attending trade shows, helping out with warehousing and customer care and talking business at the dinner table for much longer than that—Sara calls their journey in the business "a natural progression." n A C T I O N P L A N : Moe's is a family business, and Sara and Moe Jr. are quick to point out each other's strengths: she says he's a numbers person, and he says she's a people person. What they have in common is a dedication to the biz and a passion for risk-taking. "We're not afraid to try things, and we're not afraid to fail," says Sara. That comes through in their product design, which requires a bit of clairvoyance—right now, they're working on designs for 2025. In 2019, the pair (plus Moe Jr.'s wife, Barbora Samieian, and friend Noah Morse) launched Sundays, a direct-to-consumer e-commerce furni- ture brand. To make the most of their resources, the two brands have sepa- rate customer-facing departments (for example, product development and marketing) but the backend labour (IT, HR, warehousing) is shared. n C L O S I N G S T A T E M E N T: Collectively, Moe's and Sundays have 250 employees, and franchise stores and showrooms in five countries. Moe's has surpassed $100 million in revenue, the majority coming from wholesaling to retailers like West Elm, Anthropologie, Hudson's Bay and Wayfair. Sundays experienced 150-percent growth in the last year. When asked for entrepreneurial advice, Moe Jr. quotes race-car driver Mario Andretti: "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."–A.H. Q & A FAVOU R I T E PA RT OF YOU R JOB ? MS: The breadth— getting to be involved in all facets of a business—and the continuous learning. SS: The people I work with and our customers. YOU R P R OU DE ST MOM E N T I N BU S I N E S S : MS: Being a part of co-founding multiple busi- ness in three different sec- tors: Sundays (furniture), Field & Social (quick-serve restaurant) and Ride Cycle club (fitness). SS: When I first took over the retail division and within one year we had tripled the revenue.