Six finalists selected from 34 contestants will enter the sixth annual Bears’ Lair Entrepreneurial Competition on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at The Venue in downtown Peterborough.
The competition is modelled on the popular CBC television series Dragons’ Den, where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to secure investment finance from a panel of venture capitalists. The original idea came from a show in Japan called Money Tigers; today, local versions of the show have been produced in 30 countries around the world.
In the Bears’ Lair competition, the six finalists will make their pitches to a panel of local judges before a live audience. They will then face a challenging cross-examination by the judges, who will then score the ideas based on innovation, commercialization, diversification, business plan quality, and the benefit to the local economy.
The competition will award more than $120,000 in prizes, including $14,500 in cash and more than $70,000 in business products and services.
This year, the competition will also feature the first annual People’s Choice Award from StartUpPtbo and the first annual Tech Award by Mobile Monday, with $5,000 worth of coaching accompanying each award.
Originally launched in 2010, this year’s Bears’ Lair competition will again be judged in two categories, the first being goods and services and the second being innovation.
A grand prize winner and runner-up will be selected from the three finalists competing in each category, who will then share the prizes.
The judges for the goods and services category are Dawn Hennessey (manager of major accounts at the Business Development Bank of Canada), Paul Bennett (co-owner of Ashburnham Realty) and Cameron Taylor (CEO and founder of OUTDOORsmart!).
In the innovation category, judges are Diane Richard (president of Diatom Consulting and Professional Training Inc.), Michael Skinner (president and CEO of Kawartha Entertainment Group Inc. and MAS Capital Investments Inc.), and Tim Barrie (president of Merit Precision).
Here are the six finalists by category, with a summary of their business ideas as provided by the contestants and a video.
Innovation Finalists
Brooke Hammer – Chimp Treats
Chimp Treats actually embodies the claims of other “health foods” with a natural, simple ingredient list: bananas. We use them fresh, frozen, dried, baked, and everything in between to produce truly innovative, healthy, tasty treats. We don’t position our products as “decadent” or “indulgent” because our products can be enjoyed any time of day, as often as you wish, with no guilt or adverse consequences. We avoid “boring” and “bland” at all costs and strive to hear “there’s no way this is just bananas”! We don’t take anything out, we don’t add anything in, we just take our cues from our primate friends while capitalizing on man’s best technological inventions. The end product? Delicious sweet treats that benefit anyone, from 1- 99, the environment, and the animals.
David A. Winter & Sherly Loucks — Canuck Play Inc.
For the 19 million Canadians that play video games, Canuck Play offers exciting Canadian content featuring our sports, our history, and our culture that bigger studios neglect. Canuck Play offers national advertisers with existing ties to the subjects of our games, innovative opportunities to put their message literally at Canadian gamers’ fingertips. Canuck Play staff have a proven track record of creating dynamic immersive player experiences, tying emerging social media networks/platforms into video games, and pioneering ways to entice gamers’ to pay to customize which resulted in millions of dollars in profits.
Rick Dolishny — Blush Drop
A DIY (Do It Yourself) wedding video solution for internet-savvy couples. Couples and their friends and families upload video via an anonymous file transfer solution. No login, password, or app to install. Couples receive a 2-3 minute montage suitable for YouTube, Facebook, or any other social media network that supports video. Blush Wedding Films is our parent company and has been in business since 2004. BlushDrop was created in 2016 to serve the growing low-cost DIY and crowdsourced wedding planning and operation industry. We provide a website where friends and family of a wedding can upload video footage without any logins, passwords or apps to install.
Goods and Services Finalists
Rob Howard — Kawartha Local
Kawartha Local began as an idea for a local only bricks and mortar retail store. In that early iteration Kawartha Local would simply resell artisan works, products of the land and other locally produced goods to pro local consumers in the City of Peterborough. Think of it as modern General Store, a retail environment where unique, homespun goods are sold at a premium and guaranteed to be locally made. However, investing in overhead on the basis of an untried retail concept is risky. As an alternative, and to capture the 2015 holiday shopping season, we created an all local minimally viable product called the Kawartha Local Gift Crate. In effect, Kawartha Local became a virtual “small box” store.
Bob Kasprzak — Kaspr Boards Canada
Kaspr Boards is following in the wake of Peterborough’s long history of paddle sports by providing a Canadian made product in a ‘made in China’ market. Although the bulk of paddleboards are purchased in North America, 95% of paddleboards are produced overseas. We will be the first manufacture of stand-up paddleboards in Ontario, aiming to be Peterborough’s next John Stephenson (the grandfather of Peterborough’s canoe building industry). Our boards are designed and shaped in house using roughly 95% Canadian sourced products with an environmental focus, including the use of EcoPoxy products that are soybean based, which are less hazardous to our health and the environment.
Melinda Masters — Melinda Custom Sewing
Innovative New Line : Dream Theme Wedding Let’s turn dreams into reality. The DreamThemeWedding Esty shop is an on line shop that sells Canadian made, unique, high quality, hand crafted, ‘theme’ wedding outfits & accessories at competitive prices for ‘Brides to be’. It’s truly about providing an unforgettable experience for the ‘Bride to be’, and the DreamThemeWedding Etsy Shop has that covered – beautiful photography, great prices and a simple, satisfying and convenient online experience.
