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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/364562
bcbusiness.ca September 2014 BCBusiness 47 entirely different business. Making the adjustment was not simply a matter of recognizing the opportunity, but of hav- ing the courage to abandon a lucrative enterprise to focus elsewhere. Just a few years ago the couple had been working a flourishing catering business out of that Honda truck, as well as operating a pop-up restaurant in the Olympic Village. "By the end of 2012," Chovancek recalls, "we had over $400,000 in sales." bCbUSINeSS.CA Finally came the verdict: permission denied. AIBC believed that the name could lead to confusion. "As if people might think our company built wedding structures, like churches," Myles says, "or maybe gazebos." Myles and Harris hired a lawyer to appeal the case to the AIBC. "We researched other businesses that use the word, like 'landscape architects.'" A letter of appeal was sent to the AIBC. Eventually the organization reversed itself. The Wedding Architects were free to start building their busi- In the meantime, while work- ing as a bartender at The Refin- ery on Granville Street, Mote had created a line of cocktail bitters. Her intention was to fill a crying need in the Canadian market for the kind of extracts top American bartenders had long depended upon. Mote's products proved hugely popular with bartenders. Ann Tuennerman, founder of the American festival Tales of the Cocktail, told the couple that the popular event was coming to Van- couver in February 2012 and that their bitters would be featured. "We said, 'Oh! OK,'" Mote recalls. "So that was the impetus for us to get rolling on Bittered Sling." The products generated sales of $50,000 in 2012. Chovancek had suggested adjusting the Bittered Sling cata- logue to include more culinary- friendly offerings. The result was a line of products that ranged from Malagasy Chocolate Bitters to Shanghai Rhubarb Extract to Denman BBQ Sauce, among many others. The couple eventually signed an exclusive worldwide deal with gourmet product dis- tributor Qualifirst International. "We now had the ability to get our bitters into other markets," Chovancek says. In 2013, Bittered Sling generated sales of $320,000 while their catering business had shrunk to 20 per cent of reve- nues. "We made the decision to completely change directions," says Chovancek. Shifting gears, they developed long-term rela- tionships with their distillers and warehousing in the Okanagan, hired a communications direc- tor and expanded their office and production facilities. "We also spent a ton of money, time and energy developing events around the world focused on bit- ters, cocktails, food and hospital- ity," says Mote. Such adjustments are com- mon in the annals of small business. Arran and Ratana Ste- phens, co-owners of Nature's Path, are a classic example. The couple started with a Kitsilano vegetarian restaurant back in 1967 before founding Lifestream to sell organic food products. Bad partnerships led them to sell their interest in Lifestream in the early '80s, but even when Arran launched Nature's Path in 1985 the course corrections were not over. He initially intended to focus on frozen sprouted bread products. "The problem we ran into was the limited availability of retail freezer space," Arran says. So he began to think about cre- ating more shelf-stable products. Today Nature's Path is North America's largest organic cereal brand. While Mote and Chovancek have yet to reach those lofty heights, they're on their way. Projected 2014 sales for Bittered Sling are just over $400,000, and the line recently took home three gold and two silver medals at the 2014 International Review of Spirits competition in Chicago. Selling the truck, however, was as clear a sign as any that the busi- ness transition is complete. "It was almost like lighting catering on fire," Mote says. "We're never doing catering again." In October 2013, Traci Myles and Melissa Harris got together to launch a new wedding plan- ning company. Thinking about the entire process of wedding planning from blueprints to realization led them to what seemed the perfect name for their new business: The Wed- ding Architects. Off they went to Small Business BC to register the name—and then trouble. It turned out that using the word "architects" required permission from the Architectural Institute of B.C. "We waited for months," Myles recalls, "contacting them every two weeks or so." the Title ★ p L AY I N G F O r