Founder — 2012 to 2017
Illbury &
Goose
Co-Founder / Brand Director
My first company. In 2012, at 22 years old, while studying full-time at Western University, I co-founded Illbury & Goose — starting with a hunt for a unique t-shirt design and $3,000. Before this, I'd worked for major Canadian retailers Roots and Aritzia, building real expertise in merchandising and sourcing. Inspired by the small businesses owned by our grandparents — Illbury Furs and The Country Goose — we turned that expertise and a passion for community into an entirely Canadian lifestyle brand. Over five years I developed hundreds of ethically made products — clothing, jewelry, leather, apothecary, home goods, coffee — in collaboration with countless small businesses and artisans, growing that $3,000 into $500,000+ in annual revenue, selling 9,000+ units in 2015 alone, distributed internationally, with two retail locations. In 2017, I sold the brand to my former partner; it's still thriving today.
It started at music festivals across Ontario and a booth at the Western Fair Farmers Market in London. In 2014 we won Seed Your Startup, a pitch competition run through the Propel student incubator — one investor came in at $100,000, and we raised a quarter of a million more through the BDC. The first $50,000 went into moving production to Canada and cutting our own garments. When I graduated, I deferred medical school to run the company properly, and we opened our first full-time retail store in Old East.
In 2014, after winning a startup pitch competition, we turned the side hustle into a real business. This film marked the launch of Illbury & Goose and our first Canadian retail location.
Across those years I designed a couple of hundred products — season after season of them. That is the part of this story that matters most: I didn’t art-direct a range, I drew it.
Swim, flannel, headwear, jewellery, knitwear — pattern, trim, label and fit. Season after season, drawn rather than directed.
The range that took the brand out of clothing — glass spray, all-purpose, packaging and labels designed to sit on a shelf and be kept.
The campaign photography — cast, styled and shot around the lake the brand came from.
Part of our strategy was setting up at large music festivals and events, and on university campuses — that's what drove our initial success. University students would come to the East End of town for us, then stay to check out the market, returning weekly. We helped revitalize an entire neighbourhood by putting our store where we did, and helped numerous local artisans take their craft full-time after our order sizes grew well beyond their own capacity — custom-designing and white-labeling their products under our own quality branding.
Illbury + Goose is a nod to Canadian entrepreneurship, family legacy, and the journey of Canadians everywhere — a movement that supports local and thinks global. From day trips to nightclubs, cityscapes to the Rocky Mountains, Illbury + Goose is truly unique and entirely Canadian. Through each product I developed, my goal was to educate and encourage a millennial audience to make sustainable choices. The brand was named a Best of London 2015 Winner, was referenced in London's State of the City address by Mayor Matt Brown, and picked up real press — including CBC's Good Morning with Wei Chen, TrendHunter, Sharp Magazine, and the London Free Press.
Our summer ’16 collection came out of a 13-day road trip through the American deserts. I designed the whole thing off the back of it — a unisex clothing and accessory line built on custom-dyed rust and moss bamboo cotton, desert-print hats and board shorts, jewellery, leather goods and skincare.
