Best Idea Challenge Winners Combine Talent and Passion
Press Release
November 4, 2005
Saint John, NB
Combine talent and passion and you’ve got a winning proposition. Find a niche market and you’re on your way to building a solid business plan.
The winners of this year’s Best Idea Challenge showed passion for their business ideas, while identifying a community of customers looking for their products.
This year’s winner was Chris Day, a graphic designer at the Telegraph Journal who spent two years making snowboards in Ontario before returning to Saint John a few years ago.
“It was my favourite job of all,” he said in his entry.
Day’s idea is to build customized snowboards. He believes it’s the perfect way to combine all of his skills into one. He knows snowboarders well, and says they’re all very different and look for unique designs. His business would enable snowboarders to select their own design, shape, and graphics to suit their personality and style.
Understanding that his business would fill a niche market, he knows he’d need to start small and grow his business slowly, eventually taking his boards to industry trade shows, and making his designs customizable online.
There’s lots of competition in the region for snowboard sales, but Day says he is unaware of any company in New Brunswick making hand-crafted snowboards. Across Canada, he knows of five companies offering this product.
Day says he has a strong advantage over any company entering this niche market. “I have built snowboards before,” he said, “and I will put the passion I feel for the sport into each board I make.”
Second place went to Holly McKay, a local artist best known for her whimsical paintings “Kitty in the City”, a popular series sold at local and regional galleries. Her idea is to create customized gift packages that would include a personalized pet portrait & a set of greeting cards of the painting. They could be sold through her directly or online through her web site www.workinfolkart.com.
As a recognized artist, Mckay is going after the sophisticated gift giver, as these one-of-a-kind paintings would be a high-end gift. Still, she believes there’s a growing market for this type of product – people love their pets, and will spend money to offer unique gifts to other pet lovers.
“Pets are my connection to a large number of consumers in Canada, and the US market,” says McKay. “In the custom creative market, I am able to focus on personal service. Most of these sales usually lead to repeat business for additional paintings, greeting cards, prints, handbags, or additional pieces my art line has to offer.”
The third place winner was UNBSJ student Shuo Wang, who wants to bring famous meals from Asia to people’s dinner tables.
“My idea is to develop a line of semi-cooked foods to satisfy people’s need to save time and money, while meeting their requirements for taste and nutrition,” he said.
This line of foods would be a mixture of vegetable cuts, meat cuts and seasoning, all packaged together for the consumer to quickly put together at home. Unlike most prepared foods that require baking, or a few minutes in the microwave, he says his products would use the cooking methods of frying, steaming and stewing. The food would all be fresh, and allow the consumer to make elaborate dishes in only a few minutes.
The winners of the competition will all receive cash prizes and be encouraged to take the next step with their idea – fully developing a business plan en route to implementation.
The judges were pleased to see people taking their ideas, writing them down, and entering them in the competition for feedback.
“Many of us have great ideas,” said Eric Poirier, Regional Manager for Aliant, one of the judges in the competition. “But the difference between an idea and a business is taking the steps to work out the details to determine whether or not the idea is feasible. I hope all the participants in the competition will keep working on their ideas and take them to the next level.”
“It’s also great when you see someone’s passion come through when describing their idea,” said Poirier. “It makes you believe they can really pull it off. The market still has to be there, and the business has to be sustainable, but combining a love for something with the right skills is the start for a winning proposition.”
In February, Enterprise Saint John’s Emerging Entrepreneurs will hold their second annual “Elevator Pitch Competition”, where competitors will have the chance to pitch judges their business idea while riding in an elevator.
The Best Idea Challenge is part of the Aliant Venture Business Competitions organized by Enterprise Saint John’s Emerging Entrepreneurs program. It is sponsored in part by Bayview Credit Union, ACOA, the Provincial Department of Training and Employment Development, UNBSJ, [here] and The Wave.

Released by Janet Scott,
Project Coordinator, Emerging Entrepreneurs