BC Business
Entrepreneurship is ingrained in Erin Josephy's life story.
Life Story: Entrepreneurship is ingrained in Erin Josephy’s life story. Her grandparents immigrated to Canada from Europegrandpa from Germany, grandma from Holland and started a small family farm in Quesnel. With her parents’ help, the business grew into a plant nursery, landscaping company and golf course. Josephy graduated from Thompson Rivers University with a bachelor in business in 2013 and ran a franchise through Student Works Painting for three summers. By 2016, she wanted “to start my own brand from scratch, something that didn’t exist before,” she explains.
Recognizing a gap in the self-care products industry, Josephy and her life and business partner, Paul Baluch, founded Kismet Industries, offering all-natural itemsbath salts, scrubs and mistshandcrafted in Vancouver and sold at an accessible price. The company “was started on the idea that you should be able to pick up a product and understand the ingredients,” she says.
Bottom Line: Kismet offers a product catalogue of 10 items available at more than 400 retail locations in Canada and the U.S., including Anthropologie, Hudson’s Bay, Indigo Books & Music and Whole Foods Market. The business, which has sold some 100,000 units, has posted 200-percent average annual growth since its founding.