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WOMEN IN BUSINESS 2017 PUBLISHED BY BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER
‘MAKING’ THE BUSINESS CASE FOR
UPCYCLING
Hands-on entrepreneurs are crafting the business model for sustainability
HAYLEY WOODIN
W
hat started out as a side project taking landfill-bound materials and turning them into furniture quickly became a business for Jesi Carson and Theunis Snyman.
To meet Lupii Café’s zerowaste mandate, Basic Design designed and produced all the interior furnishings and signage from reclaimed, upcycled materials | BASIC DESIGN
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The duo run Basic Design, a social enterprise housed in a studio at MakerLabs, a 26,000-square-foot Railtown workspace complete with laser cutters, 3D printers and other maker tools. While the company produces unique pieces of furniture and products such as wallets and mobile phone cases out of second-hand materials, the business is really centred on redefining the value of waste. “We just kind of began exploring with materials,” says Carson, who studied sustainability through Emily Carr University’s interaction design program. In discarded textiles and used pieces of wood, Carson and Snyman saw potential for products that were beautiful, sellable
2017-02-08 10:26 AM