BC Business
Tara Bosch started what would become SmartSweets in the summer of 2015 with a mission to make candies everyone loves, but without added sugar or artificial sweeteners. She adored sweets growing up, but as a teenager she fell into an unhealthy cycle of binging and losing self-esteem. The thenUBC arts student wanted to create treats she could feel good about eating, so she spent three months testing recipes in her kitchen with a candy mould she bought from Amazon.com.
Taking sugar out of candy is no small feat—that’s usually what it’s mostly made from. Bosch remained undaunted. “I had no idea how I would get there, but I was confident I could find a way,” she says. She did. Next, she dropped out of her classes to learn how to build a company as a venture in residence at the Next Big Thing, the Vancouver incubator started by Hootsuite Media founder Ryan Holmes and venture capitalist Meredith Powell.
SmartSweets launched in August 2016 with two lines of gummy bears (fruity and sour) that have just three grams of sugar per 50-gram bag. The Vancouver-based company’s six types of sweets can now be found in more than 12,000 stores across the continent, including retail giants like London Drugs, Loblaws, Kroger and CVS. It aims to be in 20,000 by the end of this year. Smart-Sweets, which has 39 staff, completed its first venture capital funding round in January, at a $60-million valuation.
Bosch, 25, says she always planned to grow her company quickly, despite its humble beginnings. “I had that vision of scale and reach from day one,” she explains. “It needed to be a global candy company that is synonymous with candy in the same way Kleenex is synonymous with tissue.”
Surprisingly, she doesn’t always feel superhuman, despite her heroic ambitions and unwavering determination. “It’s funny, because it’s in direct contrast to waking up every day and wondering, am I capable?” she reveals. But Bosch never doubted she would achieve her goals: “My vision that it was going to happen never trembled.”
What was your first summer job?
McDonalds. I was 13. I was on meats and fats in the back. So I was in the back with all the guys cooking hamburger patties and fries, and working on the grill. It taught me a lot. At the same time, I was working at Domino’s Pizza. It taught me the value of hard work. There are no shortcuts. You need to put in the work.
Is an entrepreneur born or made?
I believe an entrepreneur is made. For me, it came down to confidence. I always have an innate sense of urgency, and I watched Dragons’ Den religiously. But because of my relationship with food, I didn’t have the confidence I would be capable of acting on my ideas.
Without the confidence, the belief in yourself, you can have all the ideas in the world, but they’re just going to sit in your head. And that’s how it was for me for many years.
What is your definition of success?
Serving a purpose larger than yourself and being fulfilled by it and living your best life because of it. That’s the ultimate success in my mind.
What other career might you have had?
I wanted to be a chimpanzee trainer and support chimpanzee rehabilitation. I’ve always been obsessed with them because they’re so human-like.
Or maybe something in real estate. Maybe I would have been a real estate agent because I like the instant gratification of seeing your efforts come to fruition in terms of selling and building relationships.
What’s one thing that people would be surprised to learn about you?
People assume that I’m super-confident and I have things figured out. But it’s the entire opposite. I have to work on being confident every day, or I go into a rabbit hole of not thinking I’m capable.
I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and keep the commitment to moving forward regardless, and knowing that I’ll figure it out as I go.
Finish this sentence for us: “Entrepreneurs need a lot more ”
Transparency of how it is behind the scenes. If entrepreneurs showed realness of what the grind is, that would enable people to normalize the concept of fear and act on their ideas regardless.
What businessperson do you most admire?
It’s the cheesiest answer in the world, but hands-down, it’s Oprah. She’s been able to carve her own path. She approaches everything she does with an air of strength but at the same time, gentleness. I’m really inspired by that—how she’s able to be strong and kind at the same time.
What do you do to relax/unwind?
Go into nature with my dog. It’s the only thing I have found that brings my mind back to a sense of peace. My dog’s name is Coby, and she’s six years old.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I would honestly say I am figuring it out. I have no idea.
I think it’s one thing to act on an idea and be a founder and have the resourcefulness to bring it to life, and I think it’s an entirely different thing to engage and inspire a group of insanely talented people.
With SmartSweets, we hired a COO pretty early on (Cindy Bokitch). She was with Starbucks for 17 years and Lululemon for six years leading their operations. It was an area where, if I’m being honest with myself, if we’re scaling this company at the scale we want to, my learning as I go from a leadership standpoint could hold us up.
That was a hire that was incredible, and I learn so much from her every day.
Name an item you typically forget to pack on business trips and regret not bringing.
My toothbrush. I get the hotel one, and usually all the bristles fall off them.
Five years ago, Christina Marcano was running her fashion company, Silver Icing, from her South Surrey home. She quickly grew out of that space. “Within a year, we had 12 employees who were coming down my back steps into the basement,” she remembers. Today, about 60 employees work in Silver Icing’s 14,000-square-foot, purpose-built warehouse, shipping clothing and accessories across Canada.
Marcano, who has a BA in anthropology from UVic, built this success from years of trial and error, resilience and multiple pivots. She had been designing and wholesaling clothing since 2004, but in 2013, her supplier suddenly stranded her without product she had pre-sold to retailers. Marcano’s retail clients had little interest in the incomplete collections she still had on hand.
However, women had long been asking her if they could sell her clothes to their friends. She switched to a direct-sales model, but the business took flight in 2014 when she freed her sales associates, or stylists, from living-room parties to use her social media-connected e-commerce platform instead.
My first summer job was at a chocolate store, in the White Rock Bernard Callebaut. I was 13.
I think you’re born with the desire. It definitely takes a certain personality. I think people can learn certain traits and grow them. I definitely feel I was born to do it, though.
If I’m helping other people succeed and having a positive impact on their life, that’s a success for me. Using channel of online clothing retail to enrich people’s lives has been definitely the definition of success.
I’ve got ideas all the time. It would have been something entrepreneurial. The process of starting from scratch and building it is something I’m passionate about. Probably something to do with tech. My father is an engineer. I’ve really grown up with computers and the whole tech side of things. I’m thrilled to be alive and in business at this time.
I was a TV actress from the ages of four to 10 in commercials and TV shows, until we moved from Toronto to Vancouver.
Support and mentorship. Somebody to talk to, who understands what you’re going through. And not necessarily to solve your problems but just to provide camaraderie. Because this can be so hard and so lonely sometimes. Having other people that can understand can really motivate you to keep going.
My dad, Roy Trivett. I am fortunate to have been born under his guidance. When I say that every businessperson needs somebody to talk to, I have a bit of an advantage there because I have him.
He is an entrepreneur in every shape and form. He’s had lots of businesses over the years, and he definitely is one of the most supportive people I’ve met. I admire him and everything he stands for.
I really focus on experiences, especially with my family. So I try and book at least two vacations a year if we can. Even when we didn’t have much money, it would just be going to Kelowna to spend time with my mom who lives there. Really it’s to have something to focus on and plan besides work.
For me, unwinding is difficult. I like to keep my mind busy, so if it’s not related to work, it’s on something more family related.
I’m a storyteller. In terms of motivating people to go the same direction, I like to tell a story and explain things. I feel like if people understand why you want them to do something, they’re much more likely to be on board with it.
Also listening. So not only do I listen to our customers and our stylist group, we really listen to our staff as well.
It’s collaborative and making sure you have the right people in the right seat.
I’m kind of a planner, so it’s not very often. Although on my last trip I forgot a bathing suit bottom.
Don Konantz was an entrepreneur most of his life until prostate cancer threatened to take everything away in 2011. He sought to return to business in 2016, but didn’t feel he could manage a startup or a turnaround with his health situation demanding so much of his energy. Vancouver-based Hops Connect was a struggling distribution company with unpaid workers and unsatisfied customers, but Konantz liked the opportunity enough to buy it anyway.
He didn’t know how he would drag the business to profitability, so he put himself to work delivering specialty hops from North American, European and Australian farms to his craft brewery customers across Canada, trying to learn how he could best provide for their very particular needs.
“I wanted to have that conversation at the loading dock,” explains Konantz, who earned an MBA from Western University’s Ivey School of Business and previously founded North Vancouverbased Colorworks Autobody Centers. He listened well. Hops Connect has grown its revenue by 100 percent every year for the past three, and Konantz says his team of seven serves about 600 of Canada’s 900 craft breweries.
I started a sailing school when I was 13 at Lake of the Woods in Ontario. There was a little yacht club and there was no sailing school at it. And people had boats under their cottages. I went around and said, “Why don’t you bring your boat out and send your grandchildren or children and I’ll teach them sailing.”
I would say born. An entrepreneur takes existing resources and gives them new wealth-producing capacity. In order to do that, you need to notice gaps, and that’s not for everybody.
When everybody wins. People, planet, profit.
I probably would have been in some sort of private equity, which I did. When I got cancer I went to work for a private equity firm. I was a bit of an entrepreneur in residence. I loved that taking a business and giving it a whole new capacity to grow, scale and create value.
I’m on a billboard at 12th and Heather in Vancouver. The billboard says: “Excellence in research helps Don with his cancer journey.” And it’s me and my wife having walked up to the top of Grouse Grind.
Access to capital.
I have a lot of people I admire for various reasons. I would say I admire Warren Buffett the most. He has self-honesty. He is able to call balls and strikes on himself better than anybody else I know.
I’m into road biking in a big way. I’ve done a whole bunch of triathlons. I love high-intensity, low-impact activities at my age.
I’ve got a trip planned to Croatia in the fall. I’ve got a trip planned to Maui. We’ll ride every day. I don’t sit on a beach.
Empowerment. People that work for me or work on my team, they have to want their goals more than me. And I’m there to empower them to unleash them, to give them what they need. An empowerment structure really fits with a lot of people. People don’t want to be told what to do.
The book I’m reading. If I forget the book I’m reading, that’s a real drag. I’ll have to go buy another one.