A Squamish tech company has been honoured with a national business award.
Maven Collective Marketing won the Editor’s Choice Award at the CanadianSME National Business Awards in Toronto last month.
The CanadianSME National Business Awards 2019 were hosted by the Canadian Small Medium Enterprise Business Magazine, also known as CanadianSME Business Magazine.
The business awards are designed to recognize and applaud the contribution that small business owners make to Canada’s economy.
Maven Collective Marketing was founded in 2016 by Squamish citizen and self-proclaimed digital marketing nerd and junky Erica Hakonson. The company has won several other awards in the past.
Hakonson’s story follows the narrative arc of many other entrepreneurs in town.
Hakonson moved to Squamish in 2013 with her family for the love of nature and the outdoors. At that time, however, she and her husband both had to commute to North Vancouver where she worked as a Director of Marketing and Communications for a software company.
It was an unsustainable lifestyle, she says.
“It was difficult working long days and taking our daughter to daycare in North Vancouver where we worked so we could be more available in case of emergency or highway closures. She would be in daycare 10 hours a day and we would be on the road two hours each day in addition to that,” she says.
Meantime, she had also been working independently as a consultant for various clients in Canada, the US, and Europe. Having built her client base, she decided to launch Maven Collective Marketing in 2016 so she could work and live in Squamish. A second child only solidified the decision.
Her company now works out of the Aligned Collective space on Second Avenue.
For Maven Collective Marketing and many technology-based companies, physical location is irrelevant, which is how they service clients as far away as Lithuania. It also means Hakonson can be close to her family most days, and enjoy the outdoors that brought them to Squamish in the first place.
“Launching my own venture gave me the flexibility, versatility and independence I needed to join this vibrant community we moved to and create a more grounded foundation for our kids in Squamish; winning this award from CanadianSME Business Magazine is just icing on the cake,” she says.
