A business development company that operates out of a Tla’amin Nation basement is taking bold steps into the international market.
For the past four years business partners Maynard Harry and Katrin Harry have been growing Raven Events and Communications, which continues to be based out of Maynard’s basement.
The company specializes in creating business-matching events that bring together Canadian first nation communities with companies interested in reaching one of the fastest growing new markets in the country.
These matching events have also provided a forum for first nations entrepreneurs to make larger connections for sales and source new products in their communities.
Raven Events began in 2012 by hosting one event and then another in 2013, but since then the idea has spread.
“Since then we’ve doubled in size every year,” said Katrin. “We think we have Canada pretty much covered now.”
This year Raven has hosted seven shows, engaging first nations communities from the west coast of Vancouver Island to the eastern shores of Nova Scotia, she said.
The events engage 350 to 400 first nations communities across the country and about 1,000 companies, with several attending all seven.
“We’ve created an effective business development forum that’s unprecedented,” she added. “No one else in Canada is doing this.”
Tla’amin Management Service Limited Partnership chief executive officer Kelly Rankin said that he has been to a couple of the company’s aboriginal business match events.
“It’s been helpful for our business with the contacts we made at the event,” said Rankin. “It provides a really good networking opportunity and good format.”
Rankin added that there are other small businesses in the village of Teeshohsum (formerly known as Sliammon) that are growing and it is great to see.
“Raven Events is a great success story of Tla’amin business,” he said.
Business matching is not unique, said Katrin, but what is in this case is that Raven is creating events where it tries to put aboriginal communities and companies that have similar goals and interests in the same room.
Now the company is poised to move into the United States and internationally.
Katrin said she used her connections in Alberta to arrange a meeting with the US Commercial Service, the trade promotion arm of the US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration.
“They were very interested in connecting native American business interests with aboriginal Canadian business ones,” said Katrin. “Out of that they started to encourage us to do events in the US.”
Those discussions led to Raven Events being invited to participate in a Canadian trade mission to Washington, DC, last June and connected Raven to American communities along the international border.
Raven Events is planning one business-matching event in the US next year. In 2018, they will look at further expansion.
