Malcolm Parry’s Trade Talk
Pocock’s burgeoning business includes wholesale and retail sales of fresh bivalves, as well as servicing more than 40 restaurants
Kristy Brinkley and Lorraine Kitsos’s Redfish firm is growing faster than the kids wearing the clothing it makes.
THE HALF- SHELL GAME: Steve and Linda Pocock farmed pigs and poultry in England, vegetables in France and had a cow- calf operation in the Okanagan before founding Sawmill Bay Shellfish Co. in 2008. The firm produces oysters, mussels and clams at its 10- acre beach and six- acre deepwater locales on Read Island. The Pococks’ home, office, processing facility and retail store are on nearby Quadra Island. A deal for an allmussel, 20- acre site on West Redonda Island is being concluded now.
It’s a fair journey for daughter Megan and often Steve to make twiceweekly deliveries to restaurants like Whistler’s Araxi and Barefoot Bistro, where they’ll sponsor an oyster- shucking contest on July 15 to benefit B. C. Children’s Hospital. They also run to Bluewater Cafe, Gotham, Joe Fortes Seafood & Chop House and some 40 others in the Vancouver area.
Their refrigerated van could become a fleet. From barely covering fuel costs and ferry fares in 2008, Sawmill Bay’s shipments have increased 20- fold to some $ 14,000 weekly. A year ago, the Pococks added frozen shucked meats, breaded and oysters Rockefeller, and mussel and clam sauces for farmers’ markets and other retailers.
“We could just sell oysters to China and Singapore,” Steve said, “But we wanted to stay serving B. C., so we added mussels, clams and valueadded products for diversity, and we’ve built up something that is” — he paused — “satisfying.”
The Pococks, who met as agricultural students in England, mightn’t say that of the 120 acres they farmed for a decade in France’s Gironde. That business slumped when their agent closed down and British supermarket clients “streamlined” their sourcing of produce. The two sold out in 2001, paid £ 150,000 for a British store- cafepost office, doubled its turnover in a year and sold in 2004 for £ 550,000.
With the Okanagan a preferred skiholiday locale, they bought 500 acres of 300- cow ranch land near Lumby but, losing money, “stopped in time,” Steve said. Selling 150 acres, they paid $ 150,000 to assume the lease on Sawmill Bay’s oyster beach, where production had dwindled to 2,000 dozen yearly, then $ 130,000 for a nearby deepwater lease, and $ 150,000 on improvements. Their key decision was switching from a shucked- meat wholesale operation to direct- marketing of superior fresh product on the half- shell. As for quality, their “gold” oysters sell out hours after delivery. Meanwhile, a 1,000- pounds- a- week wholesale mussel business should quadruple by the end of 2013.
With bivalves reproducing more conveniently and quietly than their original English farm’s 300 sows, the Pococks now enjoy uninterrupted sleep. Their flourishing business doesn’t hurt, either.
• IN THE SWIM: It does your children’s wear business no harm when movie star and movie maker Salma Hayek puts daughter Valentina in one of your dresses for a pigeon- and paparazzi-feeding romp in Venice’s St. Mark’s Square. Nor does an illustrated item in People magazine. Ditto when top fashion photographers like Lee Clower want to shoot the garments you make. Such outcomes were far in the future when native Virginian Kristy Brinkley asked Seattleborn Lorraine Kitsos about making two skirts for a wardrobe she was assembling. Kitsos replied: “Let’s do a line together.” Thus was Redfish International Inc. founded in 2008.
The name reflects a line by Dr. Seuss, who provided fan Brinkley with a personal motto: “I am what I am, I do what I do and it is what it is.”
The two mothers of two had been acquainted since 2007, and Kitsos was busy with an at- home studio. Over wine one night, they planned on producing womenswear.
“I thought it was really cool,” Kitsos recalled. “But I was very busy, loved children’s clothing, thought I’d be giving us something, and said we should do womenswear later.”
Good suggestion. From $ 150,000 a year then, Redfish should break seven figures this year and is basically just revving up. From an original retail outlet — Maria Livingston and Stefanie Missler’s local Dandelion Kids — the firm shipped 14,000 garments to 150 stores in Canada and the U. S. in 2011, and is upgrading the 35 per cent of sales made online. Eager to do the same to retailing, the two recently opened a “wild card” store on Hornby Street’s bike- lane- plagued 800 block, with a two- floor store, wholesale and Web facility in Ambleside readying for July.
Their three- year plan includes wholly- owned stores in Toronto and possibly other Canadian locales, as well as L. A. and New York. One outlet in Manhattan was the Takashimaya department store, which Brinkley said was “like a nice Neiman Marcus.”
“We don’t want to be on every street corner,” she added. However, “Growth is letting us fly at 2,000 feet and get away from the minutiae.”
That said, the responsibility of managing a growing enterprise means “it can easily become not very creative,” Kitsos said.
“It still is creative,” Brinkley added. “But we spend a lot of that creativity running the business.” That entails a careful relationship with Redfish’s Vancouver- based manufacturers. You have to find people who will hold the volume, the quality and the timing.
“Neither of us sew,” Brinkley said. That may have influenced an early decision to have garments made exclusively here. Excepting Petit Bateau underwear from France and some accessories and hard and stuffed toys, their store’s merchandise is all Redfish.
Many customers are grandmothers, which is fine with Kitsos. “We want them to have the dress that is kept for a generation,” she said, “and stored for other grandchildren to wear.” As for those two skirts Brinkley wanted that put Redfish in the swim of things, there’s no sign of them yet.
• BRAGGING RIGHT: Receiving an award for business achievement is good. Leveraging it to create more business is better. The heads of five groups — Women’s Enterprise Centre, Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, Women Business Owners, Association of Women in Finance, and Professional Women’s Network — addressed just that at a seminar Monday. It was held in the boardroom of Fasken Martineau, where PWN’s Michelle Pockey practises law.
Attendees received a list of 40 award- granting organizations and further related events. Past award recipients stressed the importance of engaging staff, tailoring applications carefully to potential award criteria, and being prepared for possible future audits. From Kelowna- based Discover Wines owner Tracy Gray came a key tip: “Brag. Now is not the time for humbleness or modesty, unless you don’t like winning.”
Now, however, is the time for the Alliance of Women’s Business Networks, which should group 22 organization via the www. weballiance. ca site by June 15.