What motivated you to start your business and what is your vision for the future of the company?

After starting to sell some small brands out of her marketing consulting space, Megan noticed a gap in the market; many small brands without the resources for a website or brick and mortar shop had no where to sell their products. Quickly she took on more brands, and the business shifted from a marketing/photography space to a shop selling local Canadian brands. Throughout a few years of growing our original Langley location and opening 3 locations during the pandemic, Megan has been developing the gift box side of the business providing businesses and others an easy way to thoughtfully gift their clients and friends with goods from their communities. We have also launched a Local Subscription Box program - Seasonal boxes filled with local Canadian goodies. From new launches to tried and true favourites, we want to give subscribers a way to discover amazing local brands and boost fellow small businesses. Our vision is to continue making shopping local easy and accessible to all, and expand into more communities across BC.

Why do you deserve to win the Best Youth Entrepreneur Award?

Megan is not only a vocal advocate for local small business, but for young women in business. She uses The Local Space Instagram account as a platform for educating followers on the realities of running a small business in Canada, as well as breaking down barriers for women in business. We have been featured in Daily Hive for her commentary on how shipping entitlement hurts small businesses, which gained a huge response from the small business community, (https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/small-business-free-shipping?fbclid=IwAR2u0GxFMMgTDoY9M5na-YdMIP1eY-dothSqN2Te6xXfOaYNJKgHBteP8jk). Her recent post about women in business has also gained quite a response from other female entrepreneurs (https://www.instagram.com/p/CoxfGMdvzKz/).

How have you optimized your e-commerce store to create a strong user experience for your community, (through content, education, reviews etc.) and what results have you achieved?

We provide customers the opportunity to shop hundreds of local Canadian brands in one place, supporting small businesses from communities coast to coast. Each product features a review section for customers to share their experiences with the product. Our website features a chat box where customers can chat live with one of our customer care representatives with questions about orders, products, etc or use the automated menu with instant answers to our frequently asked questions. We have received 99% satisfaction rate for our website about the ease of purchase, product selection, and availability of products. For our local customers who do not want to pay shipping costs, we offer free local pick up and will coordinate sending product to the location nearest them. We have built a strong social presence, especially on Instagram, as a brand with a ton of personality that doesn't shy away from educating followers on the reality of running a local small business. We have been featured in Daily Hive for our commentary of shipping entitlement, which gained a huge response from the small business community, (https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/small-business-free-shipping?fbclid=IwAR2u0GxFMMgTDoY9M5na-YdMIP1eY-dothSqN2Te6xXfOaYNJKgHBteP8jk).

Why do you deserve to win the E-commerce Experience Award?

Traditionally shopping local is done through shopping brick and mortar, so we have broken through a barrier to offer customers from all over to shop from small Canadian businesses online, some who may not even have a website of their own. This provides other small businesses an online marketplace of sorts to boost their brand to customers who may otherwise have a hard time finding them, especially if they are not part of the same community.