Toronto leads the way as Canada’s trending hub for entrepreneurs
One of the major trending entrepreneurial forces in Toronto today is The Drake business empire of the quirky and irrepressible Jeff Stober. Dubbed “The King of Queen West” by Toronto Life magazine, Stober launched his particular brand of cool boutique aesthetic with a daring makeover of the old Drake Hotel in 2004. He now controls an ever- expanding network of hotel and food & drink establishments, and a slew of Drake General Stores – gift shops filled with fun, contemporary Canadiana souvenir products. This is a guy whose sights are clearly focused on the future, and who is not afraid to wear his Canadian-ness on his sleeve.
Kate Chippindale, The Drake’s Senior Manager for Marketing and Business Development, says the company makes no apologies for showing the flag. Quite the opposite, in fact. According to her, The Drake’s quintessentially Canadian branding seems to strike a chord with people everywhere.
“It’s something we celebrate,” she said. “We were founded in Toronto, and Canada is inherent to our brand. When we poll our customers, they love to identify us as being this great Canadian company.”
For Stober, the bustling business environment of Canada’s largest city has proven to be the perfect cauldron for brewing his signature entrepreneurial brand. With 6.5 million people living in the GTA, Toronto offers him everything he needs in the way of partnerships and resources, as well as something the Drake considers essential to its branding – a .CA domain name.
Emerging entrepreneurs looking to forge their own bright ideas into venture gold should take heart. The City of Toronto alone supports more than 60 new-venture incubators and accelerators, and is home to a network of small business centres specifically designed to help entrepreneurs get their projects up and running. It’s all about making connections with the right people and the best services. Both the City of Toronto and the Toronto Financial Services Alliance maintain excellent online portals to entrepreneur mentoring programs, business boot camps and specialized business training programs.
Pair these local offerings with the focused resources of major institutions such as the Ontario Centres of Excellence and the Business Development Bank of Canada — the only Canadian bank devoted exclusively to supporting entrepreneurs — and the pathway to success suddenly becomes much clearer.
Just ask Henry Chong, the founder and CEO of Revelo Electric Corp., an award- winning company that designs and manufactures quick- folding electricand pedal-powered bikes for people who live and work in congested urban centres.
Chong, who came to Canada from Hong Kong in 1969, decided in his 40s to abandon a successful IT career to follow his passion for industrial design with his bike project. He took full advantage of Toronto’s supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem, and emerged in 2012 with a winner. The venture he incubated at Ontario College of Art and Design University won the 2012 MaRS Up-Start! venture pitch competition, and more recently the 2016 award for most innovative company by the Association of Chinese Canadian Entrepreneurs. Not bad for someone who cut costs by rapid- prototyping his first bike design out of cardboard, and who now offers instructional videos, informative manuals and a full fleet of bikes for sale or rent via the revelo.ca website.
A long- time urban cyclist himself, Chong says that Toronto’s rich multicultural fabric offers unique benefits to his business that not everyone might have thought to look for.
“Toronto has a large multicultural base that comes from a perspective of solving transportation challenges,” he said. “People from other countries have a lot more of an independent, problemsolving spirit about how to get around in big cities.”
Few would deny that one of the city’s best assets is its people – friendly cosmopolitans who show a l ot of small- town heart. The beauty of the city is found in its neighbourhoods, eclectic communities representing ethnic groups from all over the planet. Central areas, like the Distillery Historic District and the Entertainment District, offer a walkable, small- town feeling with the excitement of a big-city vibe.
It is this type of upbeat, grassroots e nerg y t hat Jimmy’s Coffee owner Phil Morrison says f uels t he entrepreneurial spirit in the city. Morrison, who funded his own way to a Ryerson University business degree with a painting company he started with a friend when he was 17, opened his eclectic, flagship Jimmy’s Coffee store in 2009. He now has six busy downtown locations, and two more cafés scheduled to open later this year.
“The vibe in Toronto is pretty friendly,” Morrison said. “When you start a business, you believe in it yourself, and hopefully you’re not crazy and other people will start believing in it too. People here are willing to give a new guy a chance. They are curious enough to try something new, and then that word of mouth thing happens and it takes on a life of its own.”
Morrison uses his jimmys coffee. ca website to push the company’s convenient rewards app, and to advertise products, swag and gift cards.
What all three of these companies have in common is an online presence with a . CA domain name, and a physical footprint inside a dialed- in, world- class city that is recognized as a Z/ Yen Global Financial Centres Index Top 10 global hub for entrepreneurship. Simply by being here, companies like The Drake, Revelo Electric, and Jimmy’s Coffee have hit an entrepreneurial home run.
If the name of the game is to i ncubate t he next great Canadian innovation, there is arguably no better trending environment for setting up shop than in the heart of Canada’s largest metropolitan area – Toronto. It’s certainly easy enough to find. All you have to do is look for the iconic map pin of the CN Tower, and you’ll know you’ve arrived.
Entrepreneurs that want to show that their business is 100% Canadian can do so by registering a .CA domain for their website. Search for a domain name today at Choose.ca.