BC Business
Co-CEO
AGE: 25
COMPANY: Aspectek and Milo Enterprises
The story: Anthony Liu’s Canadian journey began in a boarding school in Nova Scotia. “Far away from everything,” he says with a laugh, describing life as a 15-year old immigrant from Taiwan. Five years later, following a stint in the engineering faculty at McMaster University, Anthony moved to Vancouver to join his parents and younger brother, Johnny, with whom he would take over the family business, Milo Enterprises, as their father eased into retirement. Before immigrating to Vancouver, the elder Liu had operated a large manufacturing company in Taiwan with 3,000 employees building solar panels, computer monitors and the family’s mainstay: pesticides. He continued importing manufactured goods, mostly pesticides, after immigrating—under a new company called Milo Enterprises—but at a much smaller scale. When Anthony and Johnny took over Milo in 2011, they saw the opportunity that online shopping presented and created a separate e-commerce arm called Aspectek—selling direct to Canadian consumers on websites such as eBay, Amazon and Alibaba, and expanding their product offering to include pet products and kitchenware. “In Taiwan you fill in the blank,” says Anthony Liu. “In Canada, the teacher gives you a piece of blank paper and you can create whatever you want.”
Markers of success: In 2015, Aspectek had revenues of $9.5 million, up from $250,000 in 2011, earning it a place on the PROFIT 500 as Vancouver’s 17th fastest-growing company. The company’s head office in B.C. grew from three employees to 20 over the same period and is now supported by a software team of five in India and a factory with 70 employees in China.
PHOTO: ADAM BLASBERG