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/473896
a D r i a n D u k e co - Founder and ceo, sk y turtle technologies ltd. age: 28 the story: At 18, like many young rough- necks on the Alberta oil patch, Adrian Duke bought a truck. When his boss told him that the purchase was a sign that he was "here for life," the challenge set Duke off. "I couldn't handle being told that I was going to be a lifer," he says. "I enrolled at BCIT, saved up, bought an apartment in Vancouver and quit within six months." After graduation, Duke found a job as a marketer with Native Education College, where he coached many First Nations teens fac- ing problems similar to the ones he experienced as an 18-year-old West Coast transplant. "I saw the challenges and struggles they faced coming to the big city from remote communities and having no support networks here," says Duke, who is a member of the Muscowpetung Nation in Saskatchewan. In 2012—after a series of ventures that included a window-cleaning busi- ness and a security company—a hockey buddy from Duke's BCIT days approached him with the idea to manufacture waterslides. Duke saw an opportunity to improve the technology upon which multimillion-dollar waterslides depend: the control panels and systems necessary to keep the water running. Markers oF success: Skyturtle has raised more than $1 million from private inves- tors and has more than 16 patents pending for its waterslide-related technology, which it develops and designs with a partner that has factories in Missouri and Iowa. Duke says that Skyturtle is also in talks to manufacture a slide with a straight vertical drop (and loop) for vari- ous parks in the U.S. —J.P. e u g e n e s u y u Founder and ceo, tinkerine studios ltd. age: 26 the story: Maybe it was the designer in his blood—his parents once owned a silk- screen business—but Eugene Suyu says that, in founding Tinkerine Studios, he "sim- ply wanted a product that would allow me to do any- thing I wanted." The Taiwan- born entrepreneur believed a 3D printer, one that was specifically designed for the layperson, would help people do just that: build anything (anything that can be printed with plastic, at least). His printers—the Ditto Pro, Ditto+ and Litto, selling for between $1,000 and $2,000 through the company's website and a handful of brick-and-mortar stores—are "easy to use, highly reliable and really focused on the end user," says Suyu, whose custom- ers range from designers to schools to hobbyists (which Tinkerine considers its key market, given the low price point and user-friendly focus of the company's printers). Markers oF success: Since launching in 2012, the publicly traded Tinkerine has mostly been profitable, although margins have shrunk as the company scaled from just four employ- ees to 27 over the past year. In terms of revenues, how- ever, Suyu says the company has grown 100 per cent in 2014 over 2013. "This year, we expect to knock that out of the park." —T.M. w h o i n s P i r e s M e t o s u c c e e D "Richard Branson. The first business book I ever read was Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson when I was 18, and it inspired me to pursue entrepreneurship as a career path" bcbusiness.ca april 2015 BCBusiness 47