STEPHANIE HUEN
AGE: 29 Co-founder + CEO, Plenish
LIFE STORY: Helping people always came first for Stephanie Huen. When she was young, she thought the best way to do that would be as a forensic scientist, but that vision quickly morphed into social work while she was pursuing an economics and sociology degree at UBC.
In 2014, Huen volunteered with Mount Pleasant-kep Health Initiative, a local social service organization, to help rebuild communities in Kep, Cambodia. From there, she went on to work in Hong Kong on a co-op placement, and then travelled to Singapore in 2016 as an exchange student. She was still trying to figure out how she could make a clear difference in people's daily lives.
A year later, Huen found herself wondering why she wasn't helping people in her own country. She returned to Vancouver in 2017 to join the federal government's economic department, providing support and funding to disadvantaged businesses and people.
The entrepreneurs she served inspired her and, in 2020, the entrepreneur in Huen won when she launched Plenish, a furniture subscription company in Vancouver, with her friend and co-founder Chang
Li. “I saw the direct impact I was making for people's households and homes,” says Huen. “That's why I'm here today.”
BOTTOM LINE: Vancouverbased Plenish partners with Canadian retailers and lists their products on its own website. The company takes care of furniture delivery and assembly to create a hassle-free experience for clients and also offers options to buy items out at retail prices, swap them for others, or rent them for a monthly fee. “We're essentially trying to reduce the amount of furniture waste that's going to landfills each year,” adds Huen, who's guided Plenish through 600 percent growth in sales and 120 percent growth in customers over this past year. With seven team members on board, the company has rented thousands of furniture pieces to homes and businesses throughout Metro Vancouver and Toronto. –R.R.