Unveiling Our Epic Tale: The Journey So Far!
We thought a little recap of the startup adventures at 7 Leagues might be in order.
We’ve done it up for you in the style of the Hero(ine)’s Journey, with visuals.
(Our apologies to Professor Joseph Campbell for twisting his theory of mythic narratives to our needs.)
Act I – Departure
The Call to Adventure
Our hero and founder Tasha Nathanson returns from working overseas, intent on making an impact at home, determined to start a business that will be a profitable force for good. While seeking the right business idea, she happens upon an exhibit of handmade fish leather by a group of Vancouver artists. It is beautiful! She wonders, “Could this be scaled up to commercial quality and quantity to reduce waste, add value, and create jobs?”
Leaving the Ordinary World
Over the next year, she delves into vast libraries of knowledge. She discovers that Prada, Gucci, Nike and others are already using fish leather. Fish leather is thin, durable, and flexible; in fact, it is 9 times stronger per thickness than mammal leather. She learns that there are already a few commercial fish leather tanneries around the world, but some are using toxic ingredients, like chrome, to transform skins into leather. Other formulas include plastic, either on or in the leather, or undisclosed ingredients that avoid transparency all together. So there is room for a new company to focus on sustainability, innovation, and high quality production. Her beginner alchemy trials (R&D) in the kitchen workshop are messy but successful; her results however, like the artist handwork that inspired her, do not constitute a scaleable business opportunity.
Crossing the Threshold
To learn first-hand about the leather tanning business and tanning machinery, she travels to Europe to work as a tanning apprentice. In exchange for room and board, she labours and learns some of what to do …. and a lot of what not to do. The chipper grinds and growls and threatens to pull in her fingers. Huge cauldrons of tanning liquid churn above a fire and she is told to stir often so as not to be burnt by volcanic spurts of boiling bark that leap and lash. The large motorized wooden tanning drums have no protective barrier and the tanner often reminds her that if she stumbles into one and it hits her, she will be dragged under and likely die. The “safety” switch is installed on the other side of the building, out of reach. From this unregulated, unregistered rural tannery one lesson she learns is: it takes more than machines to modernize production.
Escaping alive with her digits, eyes, and fish leather samples, she journeys to a shoe school in Toronto to see how the material performs. In a 10-day intensive shoemaking course, she cobbles together a proof-of-concept pair of shoes to wear test. The leather wears well through daily use during the following snowy and rainy Vancouver fall, winter, and spring.
The idea is proven - as is the need for a full-fledged alchemist (tanner) with proper training to lead production, and machinery to get started.
Act II – Initiation
The Road of Trials
By the time she rallies the courage and funding to look for a start-up space and buy machinery, the pandemic and the shipping crisis are in full swing.
Meeting Mentors
As luck will have it, she finds an unlikely champion. Forest Products Innovation responds with surprise and interest when she highlights the potential to use wood processing waste in leather manufacturing and they kindly invite her to move her startup into temporary space at their facility on UBC campus.
On the advice of her new Icelandic consultant and mentor, she orders a brand-new, stainless-steel tanning drum from Germany. It comes with all the safety features, as well as reliable German engineering. She also orders some Italian machinery: one to buff the back of the leather to a consistent thickness and one to glaze the front to a brilliant shine using biodegradable waxes and oils.
The Ordeal
Tasha now knows she must find a tanner trained to use biobased materials to make leather with modern methodology, consistent commercial quality, and an interest in further research and development. She is searching for an alchemist with the power needed to transform fish skins and tree bark into clean, strong, and beautiful leather.
(There are no other industrial tanneries in Canada and no tanning training in North America, which makes it very hard to find a trained tanner here. About a 100 years ago, the leather industry turned away from natural tanning materials and instead to (cheap and quick but inexcusably dangerous and inorganic) chrome to make leather. This is part of what gives leather its dirty reputation and also what eventually chased it out of Canada, as environmental regulations came into place.)
With detailed and determined searching through each dusty page of her Magical Directory (ie: Linkedin), she thinks she has found her wizard. A young man from Spain with a Bachelor’s in Chemistry and a Master’s in Leather Technology had been drawn to Vancouver for love and marriage. But he does not stay long at the tannery. Fish leather is not his quest. The search continues for the much-needed alchemist.
The needed magician again appears to be found! He has an Honour’s degree in Leather Technology from Northampton University in the UK, where he created a spell book (honour’s thesis) steeped in sustainability, waste reduction, problem-solving and innovation, in addition to several years’ experience in conventional tanneries. He looks to be our wise companion for the next leg of the voyage. We agree to bring him here.
But wait:
What new trial could waylay our heroic journey? Our hero has found herself lost in the labyrinth of immigration. As she runs in circles laid out by the federal and provincial bureaucracies, precious time is being lost. Our story is currently waylaid here.
Crossroads
Will we find our way out of the maze, and bring our alchemist to Canada?
Or will a new path present itself, and we move the company to another country?