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The Outlook - Thursday February 06, 2003 Positive
Energy. Earl & Trish Ellingson see a healthy future in snackfood
business. Earl and Trish Ellingson have worked for Internet companies and have seen the future. It has nothing to do with high-speed connections, E-commerce or even multi-Ram capability. The future, as the couple see it, is energy cookies for the health conscious. The young couple met while attending Okanagan University College in 1992 as Earl earned a psychology degree, and Trish laid the academic groundwork for a degree in anthropology that would be completed at UVIC. In 1997 they moved to Seoul to teach English. When they first agreed to one-year contracts, the South Korean currency was strong and their pay was the equivalent of $2,500 Canadian per month. By the time the Asian economy flu bug hit and deflated the currency, they were earning about $1,200 each. Seven months in, they asked to be released from their contracts so they could return to B.C. It was probably easier to get out of their contracts because of the unique circumstances at the school they worked for, Earl Ellingson explains at The Outlook office this Thursday morning. "Our owner got arrested a couple of times for attacking a couple of teacher friends. He tried strangling them. He even bragged about beating his wife and kids." The experience, though, solidified Earl and Trish's blossoming relationship. Upon returning home, the couple moved to Cranbrook to live in a house that sat vacant since Trish's grandmother passed away a couple of years earlier. They landed four-month jobs with BC Hydro's Youth Energy Services program. Earl was a media liaison and Trish worked on an economic development project for the communities of Cranbrook and Sparwood. They were great jobs, the young couple explains, with Earl adding he can understand why some people are drawn to bureaucratic positions. When the jobs ended they signed up for a provincial government program called YOUBET (Youth Business Entrepreneurial Training). "They walked us through and showed us how to develop a business plan," Trish says. It was the inspiration they needed to start their own business. Something that never even occurred to them when they moved to South Korea to teach. Not yet married, the soon-to-be newlyweds moved back to the Lower Mainland and into Trish's father's home in West Van. They were planning to complete Masters Degrees in speech language pathology at UBC and spend a year studying the necessary prerequisites to get into the program. Their goal was to start their own speech pathology clinic. Earl was accepted by both UBC and the University of Alberta, but the couple had a year to think about it and decided they couldn't spend two more years studying and being broke. So, they enrolled in the UBC Internet Publishing program, which involved three months of intensive study at $5,000 apiece. "We were going to be web designers together, " Earl explains. Their list of clients eventually added up to 30 and they paid off their debt, but the work rarely let them spend quality time alone together. They were at the "beck-and-call" of clients who wanted changes and servicing, notes Trish, a North Van native whose maiden name is Humjan. So, they started thinking about a product they could market that they wouldn't have to constantly service once it was in the hands of a customer. The answer was literally at the tip of their tongues. "We realized that all along through university we were eating these little snacks and Da-ding!" Trish shares. The snacks were what the Ellingsons now refer to as the "World's Simplest Protein and Trail Mix Bar." Earl's mother first created the concoction of whey protein, cranberries, dates, raisins and almonds in her Kelowna are home after Earl's sister, a teen at the time, came home from the gym after a workout and told her mom, Bernadine Ellingson, that she needed to come up with some sort of healthy energy product because there was nothing but crap out there. Bernadine, a health food oriented caterer in the Kelowna area, responded with "Power Balls." Power Balls lead to ELEV8 Me Earl and Trish realized that with a little refinement they had a marketable product that would appeal to athletes and health conscious people who read labels on the food they eat before purchasing it. Having both taken jobs with startup web development companies, they used their fellow office workers as test subjects, and "they always had positive feedback." The gluten-free, sulphite-free product that is low in fat and has a balance of carbohydrates and protein, with protein accounting for 25% of the cookie-shaped bar's makeup, was confirming the Ellingson's belief that it was a marketable item. But working full-time left little time and energy to market the product. So, they set about to find financing that would allow them to fully refocus on their new entrepreneurial pursuit. After approaching various private investors who basically told them they wanted significant return within a matter of months and weren't much interested in their long term vision, they found support from the Business Development Corporation. PROsnack Natural Foods was incorporated a year ago from their West Vancouver apartment, with marketing to retail outlets beginning in earnest last July. So far, the Ellingsons have literally moved about 4,000 units of the double-pack cookie-shaped energy bars called ELEV8 Me. They deliver, they take the orders, they create their own packaging, marketing materials and website (www.prosnack.com), they make the cookies, and as they are both athletes who like long distance running, do product testing. Some of Ellingson's four brothers and sisters (Mark, a professional volleyball player; Kirsten a mountain climber who runs The Chief campground in Squamish; his sister Jen's fiancé, a fireman and surfer in Australia) also participate in product development. And, of course, Mom Ellingson is also regularly consulted for input into the product she created. None of the supporting cast are rich yet, neither are Earl and Trish. But they contend they don't really care if they ever get rich. "We didn't see ourselves giving the best years of our lives to a corporation unless it's our own," Trish notes. Earl recalls that he once had a neuroscience professor who told his students that they could sit in a class and take notes and their brain would be performing. But it didn't compare to the way their brains would respond if they were traveling through the Third World. "Because you're out there, you're fully engaged in your environment," Earl explains. "This is our way of being out there." Trish and Earl are not the stereotypical entrepreneurs you might see on the cover of a glossy business magazine wearing dark suits and forecasting multi-million dollar growth and a down payment on an island in the tropics. Their forecast is simply for a reasonably successful future. "I don't care about money so much as making a living and not selling my soul eight hours per day," Earl says. "Entrepreneurism is not about money, it's about lifestyle." |
