Finalists anncounced for the 2008 Burnaby Business Excellence Awards

The Burnaby Board of Trade announced their finalists for the 2008 Burnaby Business Excellence Awards. Congratulations to the nominees!

The finalists in the 8 award categories include:

Burnaby Community Spirit Award Finalists:
- Best Buy Canada Ltd.
- Brentwood Town Centre
- Scotiabank
- Vancity South Slope Community Branch
- Westminster Savings Credit Union, Metrotown Community Branch

Business Innovation Award Finalists:
- Day4 Energy
- Icron Technologies Corp.
- M&R Environmental
- Snap Technologies Marketing
- Web Tech Wireless

Entrepreneurial Spirit Award Finalists:
- Icron Technologies Corp.
- Image Path Printing Solutions
- Imagine Redesign
- MetroLeap Media Inc.
- Rock.Paper.Scissors Inc.

Environmental Sustainability Award Finalists:
- Day4 Energy
- Encorp Pacific (Canada)
- Jacques Whitford AXYS Ltd.
- M&R Environmental
- SFU Facilities Services

Non-for-Profit Organization of the Year Award Finalists:
- Basketball BC
- Bonsor Seniors Society
- The Neil Squire Society
- L'Arche Greater Vancouver
- Progressive Housing Society

Business Person of the Year Award Finalists:
- Keith Beedie, The Beedie Group
- Richard Davies, G&F Financial
- Don Hardman, 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup
- Randy Hnatko, Trainwest Management & Consulting
- Coro Strandberg, Strandberg Consulting

Small Business of the Year Award Finalists:
- Binary Stream Software, Inc.
- Jubilee Cycle
- Petal Pushers
- Simba's Grill
- Snap Technologies Marketing

Business of the Year Award Finalists:
- ABC Recycling
- The Beedie Group
- Best Buy Canada Ltd.
- Kin's Farm Market
- Stormtech

Practical reasons for strengthening member to member network ties

Here is mini article we put together for the Burnaby Board of Trade. Practical reasons for strengthening member to member network ties:

1. Relationship: It's easier to call or email a fellow member and start building a relationship. Having membership in common creates a good starting point. Plan to meet at an event. It is almost always preferable to do business with someone you know and have developed a relationship with than it is to place your trust with a complete stranger.

2. Consistency: Developing a relationship with a group of people that you see on a regular basis has its advantages. You become familiar with their products, quality, needs and also the various shortcuts that can be taken to achieve your desired ends. For example, if you use a local printer for your stationary needs, they will likely keep your artwork on file so that re-orders are relatively easy.

3. Complementary: Member businesses are diverse and may complement your business, becoming good referral partners. This will allow you to be a better resource to all your contacts and clients.

4. Community: Because of the closer ties, people will be more compelled to go the extra mile. It is a natural to put in a little extra effort to help a friend or someone you know.

5. Accountability: Fellow members can usually be more easily held to account than firms that you have no ties with outside of the immediate transaction.

6. Activity: Business and people that are actively involved in an association tend to be more connected to the business community and interested in connecting with people than those who are not involved in such networks.

7. Productivity: Working more closely with fellow members can lead to productivity enhancements in your business. Sharing relevant information and developing informal mentorship relationships are a couple ways to do this.

8. Cost: It often costs less to do business with someone who you know through an association. Check out the current list of members who offer a discount to fellow Burnaby Board of Trade members as one way.

Innovation and The Vancouver Olympics

Next Up: Vancouver. For many Canadians, watching our athletes perform in China is only half the attraction of the Beijing Games. Sure, it's great to see Canadian athletes pick up medals but with the 2010 Winter Olympics scheduled for Whistler, there's more than just an interest in sports.

Expected to give a big boost to business and spotlight some of the rapidly growing, B.C. based companies, the Winter Olympics and how to capitalize on them is of top concern to many executives in the area. A number of executives from a variety of companies traveled to Beijing this year to assess the opportunities.

While it's the sport and spectacle of the Olympics that will be in the public spotlight for the next 17 days, a cadre of B.C. business leaders is headed to Beijing with more than secondary interest in the behind-the-scenes activities.

Game organizers and those responsible for ensuring the events go smoothly, as well as local tourism departments, will be watching to see how well the games are orchestrated. Number crunchers will attempt to quantify the costs and benefits of bringing the games to British Columbia. Business, large and small are looking at Beijing as a jumping off point for the high profile coverage they can expect to obtain when the Olympics make their way to Canada.

Many 2010 sponsors are also in Beijing, or on their way, to honour their obligations as supporters of the Canadian Olympic team, and to learn about ways they can roll out their own hospitality programs a year-and-a-half hence.

"We're hoping our presence there will help our profile as a company," said Doug Horswill, senior vice-president for environmental and corporate affairs at B.C. mining firm Teck Cominco Ltd.

The bad news for local businesses is that the Beijing Olympics disappointed. The anticipated surge of activity failed to materialize. One Chinese business owner put it succinctly:

"Everybody thought the Olympics would be great for business," he said. "It turned out differently."

A combination of tight security, high prices and the big unknown of China combined to keep tourists away. Will this also be true in 2010? Canada, an established, industrialized, capitalistic country isn't quite as exotic as China and most probably won't elicit the same level of concern from tourists, but the two big unknowns, the world economy and the security situation, i.e. any new terrorism or conflicts could impact how much benefit the Olympics will bring to British Columbia.

Investing in Olympic licenses and developing Olympic related promotions is expensive and risky. Huge sums of money are spent every 4 years to create tie-ins for the few weeks of Olympic season in the hope of lasting benefit.

What can innovators do to maximize the exposure and reduce the risk? Our take is simple. Integrate Olympic based activities into the business plan. Think both inside and outside the box. Create solid, programs that mesh closely with your company's mission statement and overall business strategy. Team up with closely related athletes or activities - think long term relationship.

The 2010 Olympics my only run 17 days but the benefits could last quite a bit longer.

Zipper inventors had their profits stuck in their teeth (The Zipper Story)

When someone mentions the word "zipper", what's the first thing that comes to mind? For many people, it's "I wish I had invented it." Zippers can be found almost everywhere on the planet. There are enough being produced each week that if they were joined into a long one, it would go around the world. Yearly production for this $8 billion industry exceeds 15 billion zippers - enough to make it to the moon and back five times.

Many inventors who file patents, including the inventors of the zipper - sewing machine inventor Elias Howe in 1851, Whitcomb Judson in 1891 (patented 1893), and much later again electrical engineer Gideon Sundback in 1913 (patented 1917), fall into the trap of being too far ahead of their time or otherwise being out of tune with the market. The zipper finally started getting good market acceptance after 1930 and is now one of the world's best known products - centuries later. It did little good for its early inventors.

Judson showed his version of the zipper to 20 million (20,000,000) people and sold only 20. If he went from door to door selling zippers and found everyone home, he would have knocked on every door in London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Vienna, St. Petersburg and Milan to reach so many people. Yet he somehow only managed to sell a handful of these things. This seems like the ultimate case of not listening to the market. Judson had a severe case of inventoritis - being completely out of touch with the market and getting such terrible results.

Persistence only pays off where there is a real market. Judson certainly was persistent and spent the better part of his life working on his zipper. He brought investors into his new Universal Fastener Company, patented his zipper and promoted it at the 1893 Chicago World Trade Fair. He kept working at it for several years. Eventually, Gideon Sundback, who emigrated from Sweden to Canada, came to work for Judson's company. Sundback worked on the zipper designs for years and patented a newly improved version in 1917, years after both Judson's patent and Judson himself had expired. Sundback's new version did not do much better than the original. New machinery was built and over the next few years, production only got up to a few hundred zippers per day. This wasn't enough to make Sundback rich and Judson was already dead and buried long before then in 1909.

Zippers didn't really get their start in the market until after the B.F. Goodrich Company used them on a line of rubber galoshes in the 1920s. Goodrich invented the name "zipper" to replace awkward sounding phrases "hookless fastener", "continuous clothing closure" and "clasp unlocker" used by the various inventors to describe the product. Other players then started entering the market. The companies started by the inventors had a hard time keeping up. This includes the ones that evolved into present day Talon. Mid-1930s Japanese entrant YKK started from scratch with no patents and now commands roughly half the world market while Talon only has a 7% share. German producer Optilon has a similar share to Talon and much of the remaining share is made up of a growing number of Chinese and Korean producers.

Founded in Japan in 1934, YKK was called Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, but 60 years later the company changed its company name to match its brand name. The privately held YKK Co. is headquartered in Japan and is made up of about 100 companies and subsidiaries operating 200 facilities in 60 countries.

YKK's success is based on constantly improving the quality of their products, treating their people with respect, lowering product prices and providing excellent service while managing tight delivery schedules. The company also introduced variations in styles, colors and attributes - highly responsive to market needs. Company founder Tadao Yoshida instilled this philosophy that he called a "virtuous circle" of rendering benefits to others so that benefits would return to YKK. His company is the Toyota of zippers.

YKK keeps quiet about its manufacturing process innovations and prefers maintaining trade secrets over patents. The company obscures the details of its improvements in its manufacturing processes. It does likewise for improvements in its supply chain and distribution management methods, custom-made computer software, and special management techniques. What is impossible for the company to keep secret is that it does not have a bad case of inventoritis. YKK has always been in close touch with the market - with excellent results.

The message for inventors is plain and simple. If you are going to do something, do your homework and always be in close touch with your market. Things don't come easily but they do come along to those who are prepared to engage the market constructively. Don't make it so your ideas and inventions end up being tens or hundreds or years ahead of time like those of the zipper inventors were. Fifteen minutes is about the right amount of time. The product could have achieved market acceptance much sooner if the inventors were better marketers. If they had gotten their zippers unstuck, they might have lived to see spectacular results from what has become one of the world's best known products.

Hope you enjoyed this article. If you are interested, feel free to download a copy of our new book.

What to do before quitting your day job

We occasionally get asked "I'm going to start a new business in a couple months. What should I do before I quit my day job?" Here are four different perspectives on this.

Tats: Before you hand in your resignation, make sure you do your homework. You need to be sure that there is a good product or service offering in place. An idea, set of samples, prototype and the like does not count. There needs to be a real business opportunity in there. Wherever possible, it should be proven, backed by a good plan and operating on a sound business model. It takes solid front-end marketing to determine that. There is rarely any value in quitting a well paying job on just a hunch there is a good business opportunity. Whatever it is, it needs to be priced for sale and priced for profit with all the costs of overhead, production, sales and distribution factored in.

An equally important part of doing your homework is making sure there are real customers for your product or service. Unless you are selling quilts, family and friends are not considered customers. Whether your customers are end users, distributors, retailers, businesses or the general public doesn't matter as much as whether or not they are real and sustainable.

Guest Commentary from Cathy Andersen, President of Canawipe Distributors Ltd.:

Make sure there is enough money in the bank to sustain a prolonged dry spell. It can take three years to develop a business to the point there is enough profit above and beyond the needs of the business to generate a healthy income.

You also want to be somewhat assured the business will not likely go broke within three to five years. The sad reality is that about half of all companies are simply not around five years after they are started. About a third of the ones that close do so because they lose money, another third break even and the remainder are profitable. There are many reasons for a company to close its doors, but not making a profit is obviously the main one. Having a sound plan, great people on board and being sure your product has a place in the market go a long way to ensuring your company doesn't become a casualty.

Cathy Andersen is the President of Canawipe Distributors Ltd., a distributor of the popular Wysi Wipe biodegradable towelettes. She can be reached at 604.552.3175 or at sales at canawipe.com.

Guest Commentary from Cissy Pau, Principal of Clear HR Consulting Inc.:

Deciding to start your own business is both risky and exciting. For some people, making the transition from having a steady pay cheque to having sporadic income is the most difficult part of running your own business.
If possible, consider talking to your existing employer about your plans before you quit. See if you can make a gradual transition to entrepreneurship by gradually reducing your hours at your day job (so that you still can earn an income) while you increase your hours in your new business.

You want to ensure that you leave your current employer on a good note. It is critical that you maintain positive relations with everyone in your network when you start a business. Depending on the business you want to start, your current employer, co-workers, and all your business associates and contacts could become potential customers for your new business or a potential source of referrals.

Be sure to review the terms and conditions of your existing employment contract. Make sure that your new venture does not contravene any contract terms. If there are any issues, you need to discuss the potential concerns with your employer to avoid future problems or litigation.

Consider taking a self-employment course to teach you what you need to know about starting and running your own business. Most programs will help you develop a business plan and will provide you insight into all areas of running a business so that you will, hopefully, avoid costly mistakes.

Last of all, make sure the business you start is something you are really passionate about. Doing something you love to do will make it easier to weather the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

Cissy Pau is the Principal Consultant of Clear HR Consulting Inc., a Vancouver firm specializing in employee retention issues for small and medium-sized companies. She can be reached at 604.688.3879 or at cpau at clearhrconsulting.com.

Peter:Have enough of the right "friends" in the area. A productive network is a great asset in building a business. If you have the right people in the right places available at the right time, your business is much more likely to succeed than if you don't. Use tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and industry networking events to enhance your network.

You also need to have key mentors and advisors in place. These people can help you develop the business long before full deployment. Call on more of your growing network of "friends" as things develop. These advisors can also help with determining when to quit your job (or the business).

The business also needs to become more enjoyable and satisfying then the job. This is easier for people who hate their job than it is for those who are very passionate about their work. There needs to be passion and enthusiasm for the new venture, otherwise it is bound to fail. This is always true if you are the one leading it and doing the sales. With few exceptions, this also holds true if you are simply taking over an existing business with a track record and organization in place. The attitude of the owner affects the whole enterprise.

10 Valuable Ways to Support Your Business Network

1. Forward relevant articles. Forwarding one or two articles or links is all that you should do here unless you get feedback asking for more of them. Don't annoy someone by sending tons of stuff forever. One or two well chosen articles should do nicely. Audio and video clips are included in this. Don't spam your network. Target specific individuals with things they will find valuable.

2. Mention the person in a blog post or article you are writing. It is a good idea to run it by the person first although not always necessary if you are mentioning something that is already in the public domain. A positive brief mention will likely go over nicely.

3. Give individuals a tip that they can use for their business. It should be specific to something they do. Maybe you noticed something on the website or see someplace where some brief feedback could be helpful. Be careful to not give "advice" where they don't want it. And avoid coming across as being overly critical.

4. Introduce someone to a prospective alliance partner. This can be a prospective client or someone the person can work with in some capacity. This is a common and traditional way to help someone.

5. Give someone a relevant book. Don't badger someone into reading it or become offended if it ends up sitting on a credenza for several months unread. It is also a good idea to let them pass it on to someone else who might find it more interesting. Don't confuse this with loaning someone a book where there is an expectation of getting it back. That can become embarrassing if the book is lost, damaged or forgotten.

6. Forward someone a useful template. This works especially well if you are well organized and have a collection of useful templates. Examples include business planning, GTD tools, checklists, marketing resources, etc. Depending on who you are sending it to, you might first need to call to set it up.

7. Give someone a testimonial. If suitable, you could give something for your associate's website, book, etc. The converse also works in some circumstances. This is where you put his or her blurb on your site, book, etc.

8. Sponsor or volunteer for their organization or group. This is a great way of supporting the person without being too direct about it. You can easily vary the level of support depending on your time and interests.

9. Write a helpful article for a publication or blog. Maybe you are in a position to feature the person in a publication or blog you regularly write for. Rather than just a brief mention, this would be more of a feature that might involve you interviewing the person for your piece. Including the person in a speech you are giving also fits in here.

10. Invite someone to a relevant business event (either just invite or pay for them). Some might consider a hockey or football game a relevant business event. In any case, sending invitations or tickets should be done based on his or her preferences and interests. Check schedules and availabilities before sending stuff out. Also make it easy for the person to politely decline your offer in case it doesn't fit.