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/290301
bcbusiness.ca april 2014 BCBusiness 45 D evon MacKenzie is the boot- strapping entrepreneur behind The Chinatown Experiment. He launched his venture in June 2012 with a $750 budget; doing nearly all of the work himself, he trans- formed a formerly boarded-up Chi- natown storefront into a permanent home for revolving pop-up shops that feature anything from clothing to artwork to food. What sparked the idea for The Chi- natown Experiment? I was running a contracting company when I found the space, and we were going to use it as an office/workshop. I walked away from the company and I was left with the space. Around that time, I went to Portland and we kept going to all these eclectic shops and restaurants and the common question was, Why don't we have this in Vancouver? That got me thinking of all the reasons why it wouldn't work: lack of affordable space, lack of accessible space and barriers to entry to starting businesses. Having the space and knowing the trouble that all businesses go through, I came up with the idea for The Chinatown Experiment: anyone who had an idea who wanted to try it out could rent the space and we would provide the support to get people in the door to test their idea. Do you have a special interest in working with emerging entrepre- neurs and businesses? The people who are coming to us are trying to add value; they're not trying to make a mass-produced product that just floods a market to make some quick money. They're trying to do something that they're passion- ate about, which is really easy to get behind. Tell me about your latest project: rejuvenating a Downtown Eastside alleyway. The alleyway adjacent to the building we're in is considered the worst alley in the Downtown Eastside. The VPD have dubbed it "stab alley." What I've been trying to get [local business] groups to do is get a pool of money together and basically make that alleyway a less attractive place for the drug dealing that goes on: putting in greenery, adding light and making minor improvements that make it a walkway that people feel comfortable being in. What we want to do is make something that shows businesses adding value to the neighbourhood. —K.H. H eadhunting is traditionally an older person's game because success depends on two things: expertise and a network. Andrew Pollard had neither when he got started. Choosing to skip university, at 19 he got a sales job with The Mergis Group, a staffing company. Two years later, after leading the launch of the Vancouver office and teaching himself all about mining, he started his own mining-focused executive search firm. In his first year, he placed two president-and- CEO roles for TSX-listed mining companies. By age 25 he had personally amassed $1 million in client billings, and today he has worked with companies ranging from $5 million to $20 billion in market capitalization. –D.G. Devon MacKenzie Founder and Director, The Chinatown Experiment Age: 29 Andrew Pollard President, The Pollard Mining Recruitment Group Ltd. Age: 29 "DON'T WORRY ABOUT YOUR AGE. BE PREPARED, KNOW THE NUMBERS, KNOW YOUR INDUSTRY INSIDE OUT AND PEOPLE WON'T SEE IT AS A LIABILITY THAT YOU'RE YOUNG –THEY'LL ACTUALLY BE IMPRESSED" p38-67_30Under30_april.indd 45 14-03-07 2:04 PM