Retail
Gerry Butts, the former high-flying adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is in the news again. OK, not really—unless you count my cousin’s Facebook feed as a verifiable news service. (You could do worse.) On it, the finely surnamed politico...
After months of dealing with reduced margins thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, retailer Herschel Supply Co. was forced to reduce staff on June 9. Although the company wouldn’t comment on specifics, a source close to the matter told BCBusiness that 79 people...
Life Story: Other than making dresses for school fashion shows, Jess Sternberg had no technical sewing or design skills before founding Free Label Clothing, a made-in-Canada, ethical apparel brand. With a BA in English literature from McGill University, Sternberg taught in...
Life Story: Brooke Johansen grew up in Port Coquitlam with her mother, father and younger sister. She graduated from SFU (coincidentally, where her parents met) with a degree in business in 2014, but starting one of her own wasn’t top-of-mind:...
Life Story: When Mikaella Go met Tony Yu at a restaurant in Vancouver’s Yaletown, she didn’t realize that she would spend the next six years of her life as a serial entrepreneur. Working as a City of Richmond lifeguard at...
Life Story: Michelle Tran’s first “job” was serving frozen yogurt at the Yogen Früz franchise her father owned. “I was seven years old, and I was too short–my dad would put down pineapple cans so I could stand on top...
Life Story: Saskatoon-born Kaylee Astle spent her formative years being homeschooled in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Her entrepreneurial parents–dad was a financial planner, mom an interior designer–retired early and moved Astle and her sister to the Baja Peninsula. An internship...
Life Story: When Langley-born Alexa Suter was 13, she discovered her love of storytelling. Scrawling in journals, spinning short stories and crafting poems throughout her teens led her to pursue an English degree at Kwantlen Polytechnic University–and to leave school...
Life Story: By the time Sydney Koby graduated in 2013 with an engineering degree from Queen’s University in Ontario, a semester in Singapore had introduced her to scuba diving, travel and other ideas. “I didn’t want to be an engineer...
Life Story: Starting a business wasn’t on Marissa Grootes’ busy agenda in 2013, when she made a notebook-style planner to manage her schedule. The Zurich-born SFU communications grad was working full-time in design and marketing while selling jewelry on the...