Win Your Space semifinalists run the gamut
Tarot cards, interior design and gold-rush experience in running for free rent
Emelie Peacock
Northern News Services
Friday, June 9, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Downtown Yellowknife could see any number of unique businesses pop up later this year, including a new tarot reading shop, interior design lab or gold-themed tourism experience.
Kim MacNearney reads tarot cards on the deck of her home in Northlands on June 7. Kim, who has been reading cards as a home-based business, is a semi-finalist in the Win Your Space YK contest. She wants to open a card reading and retail space in downtown Yellowknife. - Emelie Peacock/NNSL photo |
These were just three of 10 business ideas chosen as semifinalists in the Win Your Space YK Contest put on by the city to encourage entrepreneurship and revitalize the downtown area. The top prize is free lease space for a year.
One semifinalist, Kim MacNearney, knows her idea to open a tarot-card business called The Magic Box could raise eyebrows.
"When you say tarot card reading people go, 'Hmm?'" she said. "It's just something completely out of left field maybe, not the normal business oriented type of plan. But yet there's a solid foundation behind it."
At Folk On The Rocks in 2012, MacNearney got a taste of how successful tarot card reading could be, when she prognosticated for 60 people in two days. So she began offering tarot readings from her home.
Now, with a potential to win free lease space for a year, she can dream big.
MacNearney imagines a spiritual space filled with local art, books and items alongside her tarot readings and workshops. She has already made connections with a local prospector to source crystals from the NWT and local glassblowers to sell pendulums and oil holders.
From crystals to gold and from spirituality to tourism, Jake Olson is a semifinalist with plans to revive Yellowknife's years as a gold rush town.
"It's incredible, the immense history that is here," he said. "There's no one right now really showing that.
Inspired by a trek down Yukon's Chilkoot Trail, Olson wants to create a space where tourists can experience mining firsthand, see gold being produced into jewelry and take home a chunk of NWT gold. He is already somewhat of a gold expert - since 2015 he has been appraising and buying people's gold and recently began producing his own gold souvenirs.
Sarah Kalnay-Watson wants to grow another kind of tourism, the tourism of love.
The experienced florist and wedding planner who currently runs home-based business Let Me Knot sees potential for Yellowknife to become a wedding destination. In fact, she is so dedicated to the idea she has become a marriage commissioner and marriage licence issuer.
"I love love," she said. "I am a romantic through and through and I figured what better way to enjoy my romance than to actually marry people who are in love?"
Kelsey MacDougall runs a home-based interior design business, N 60 Interiors and plans to open a store-front.
She has seen a lot of success since starting her business in 2015, as she is currently designing for the Yellowknife Racquet Club addition, Yellowknife Ski Club and a number of other businesses in the city.
Some of the semi-finalists have been testing out their business ideas as home-based businesses, part-time gigs or projects. Others, like Amelie Duval, have completely new business ideas. Duval, a painter and visual artist, sees a need for an art supply store here in Yellowknife.
She said the shipping costs alone can deter people from trying out this art form, and she wants to make painting an accessible hobby for Yellowknifers.
The 10 semifinalists will take business workshops next week, then spend a few weeks drafting a business plan.
The top five business ideas will be chosen July 26, and the final winner of a year of leased space will be chosen by a jury at a public event on August 2.
