Small-business owners can operate successfully by opening a business in a well-trod sector with reliable consumer demand and plenty of competition. Then there are the entrepreneurs who dare to do something never done before. Artisan SakeMaker owner Masa Shiroki is firmly in the latter group.
He opened B.C.’s only sake production facility in 2007 and later branched out into being the province’s only rice farmer – first, to produce the raw material necessary to make his rice wine and then, by growing a different variety, to sell as table rice for the first time this year.
Shiroki continues to push boundaries and this summer won a big battle.
Glen Korstrom – Business in Vancouver – Oct. 16, 2015.