shopping experience."
While the tool is improv-
ing the conversion rate (that
is, the number of browsers
that click "Buy"), Clark says
the goal is to create "more
of a discovery experience
than a transactional one."
That's also the idea behind
two new real-world stores:
in Toronto, at Queen Street
West and Spadina, which
opened in July; and in
Vancouver, at Burrard and
Robson, which was set to
open in September. The
stores feature a co™ee shop,
WiFi and stations where cus-
tomers can browse online.
"We want people to come
and stay and hang out," says
Hardy. "It's less about retail,
and more about connection
to the brand." —Marcie Good
bcbusiness.ca october 2016 BCBusiness 43
Lance Priebe
CEO, hyper hippo
Productions Ltd.
A
fter an automotive designer sketches a new car,
that design is typically sent to a modelling depart-
ment, which builds a full-scale mock-up. it's a
process that can take weeks or even months—but
Port coquitlam-based Finger Food studios is, along with
tech giant Microsoft, working on a shortcut. after the
sketch is made, a designer can snap on a computerized
headset called the HoloLens, which projects a three-
dimensional hologram of the car.
"You can walk around this design, look at the esthetics
as well as the physical properties," says trent shumay,
cto of Finger Food. the company is one of eight firms
licensed to develop software applications for Microsoft's
HoloLens—working with clients in the automotive,
architectural and mechanical industries to help them use
the headset in customized ways.
shumay started Finger Food in 2009 and was joined by
ceo ryan Peterson in 2011. they were initially focused on
building mobile apps for clients including Pepsi and 7-11,
before moving into "second screen" experiences and their
present focus on "immersive connected experiences." the
company is currently building a 26,000-square-foot studio,
called the Holodeck, for testing its virtual and augmented
reality apps. – M.G.
r u nn e r - u p
r u nn e r - u p
Trent Shumay +
Ryan Peterson
CTO + CEO, Finger Food Studios
I
n 2010, Lance Priebe
founded his Kelowna-
based studio to develop a
game called Mech Mice.
His team spent two years
and millions of dollars on the
project, only to nd out that
people liked it but wouldn't
pay for it. After that, his
approach changed. His team
would make "short sprints,"
spending two weeks on a new
game and then testing it on
various media platforms.
So in 2014 when a writer
pitched what he thought was
a terrible idea, Priebe said
yes. AdVenture Capitalist was
a game in the "idle" genre—
that is, you don't actually play
it but set it up, let it run and
come back to it later. To every-
one's surprise, initial feedback
on the game, in which players
set up companies and try to
make money, was positive.
Players would even pay for it.
Now, AdVenture Capitalist
is the company's biggest com-
mercial success—generating
more than a million in rev-
enue some months. "Nobody
thought this game would
work," says Priebe, one of the
creators of the massively pop-
ular Club Penguin, which sold
to the Walt Disney Co. in 2007
for US$350 million. "So we
tell our developers, 'You can
develop any game you want,
but you only have two weeks
to prove it.'" —M.G.
C O n S u M E r T E C h n O L O g y
