30 June 2009
Coq. Businessmen Go Into the Dragons Den
The business venture that reached CBC-TV's
Dragon's Den.
Coquitlam British Columbia - Getting off the beaten
track into B.C.'s wilderness can be a challenge when you don't know the terrain.
Anyone who has hiked, biked, or driven B.C.'s back roads knows the drill. You get half-way down a trail and it ends in a
dense, green, impassable thicket, or it turns into a nightmare of ruts and potholes.
If these scenarios sound familiar, you might want to follow the business of a Coquitlam technology company that's hoping to
revolutionize the province's tourism industry.
A couple of Coquitlam computer engineers, Steve Chapman and Steve Graham, have developed a software system to create virtual
guidebooks that take the guesswork out of trip planning.
The company is called Virtual Outdoor Adventures and already it has caught the attention of Dragons' Den producers who gave the
entrepreneurs an opportunity to pitch their business plan to the show's group of business moguls.
Chapman says he can't divulge the details of the CBC-TV venture and whether he got any investment capital, but the fact
that his business was selected for the show from 4,000 hopefuls is a promising sign.
"It was an intense experience," is how Chapman describes the morning taping on 23 May 2009.
Chapman, his wife Jackie, and Steve Graham were pretty confident going in. They'd already impressed a group of producers, hikers
themselves who could see the value of a $20 DVD-ROM that would enable them to plan a safe and enjoyable route that they
could print out and take with them or download to an IPOD or Blackberry. But nervousness got the better of them. In their anxiety, the
trio misplaced several of their props only to find them later in some obvious places - their pant pockets, for example.
"We kept losing these things and we spent a lot of time looking for them," Chapman recalled.
But such mishaps are commonplace on the road to success.
The group is now forging ahead on several fronts. An internet site, www.virtualOutdoorAdventures.com, showcases the company's product line
and Chapman says he's looking at additional ways to utilize the software he and Graham developed last year.
"We've created a software platform that pretty much any trip can be superimposed upon. People can create data and we can create
new products using the same software. That's where the real value is.
"We want to set ourselves up as a digital publisher. I employ the services of third party authors, who collect data. We can
create the product from that," he continued.
The company's first venture was a digital guide of the Kettle Valley Railway from Myra Station to Penticton, an 80 km ride, with
access points, descriptions, and photographs.
He hopes that the virtual guides will help hikers and cyclists avoid messes like the one he was in last summer when his Jeep Liberty
got stuck on the road to Chute Lake.
According to Chapman, his wife nearly exploded when the car got stuck and nearly came apart. She told him: "You're going to
go back and you're going to get a proper job," he said.
They survived and he made a note about the poor road conditions on his Kettle Valley virtual guide so others don't get in the same
predicament.
It's why his virtual guides are a sensible way to plan a trip. "You can avoid trouble," Chapman says.
Diane Strandberg.
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