Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Desiree Dupuis. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Desiree, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The year was 2016, I had been following a vegan lifestyle since 2008 when I read the book Skinny Bitch which I had picked up at YVR Vancouver Airport on my way to Maui. I picked up the book because I had always been interested in nutrition and it’s important to me to be educated on everything I put into my body. I picked up the book after a co-worker had told me that she was no longer putting milk in her coffee because of what’s in it. Her comment had me so curious and so I picked up the book and began to learn about the truth of what is in our food from chemicals, to pesticides and aspartame. About half way through Skinny Bitch, the authors begin sharing very graphic information about the absolute atrocity of the animal agriculture industry. It was the first time in my life that I realised that the piece of chicken on my plate had been a living, breathing, sentient animal and I was appalled learning about the horrifying process animals go through to end up on our plates. This new awareness had me feeling horrified, shameful, sad, and angry. Thankfully at the time I was with my best friend who is an immense animal lover and so we both stopped eating meat and pretty much went vegan that day in June 2008. Back then, being vegan was very rare. People were vegetarian or pescatarian but to be fully vegan to not eat dairy, or gelatin, or wear animal products was not very common, certainly not like it is today. Over the following 8 years, two things happened. First, I began to notice how the vegan movement was picking up and gaining momentum. The first wave of vegans are the original animal lovers and then around 2015 with the release of movies like Cowspiracy the second wave of vegans hit; the wave of people who began to understand the environmental impact of the animal agriculture industry and decided to go vegan for the planet. The second thing that happened is that I began to get more and more frustrated with the lack of designer footwear options available on the market, it was quite challenging for me to find nice designer shoes that were not made of leather or suede. Moreover, as the environmental movement started to take shape and I began realising the impact of Climate Change, I realised that not only did I not want to be purchasing animal products, I also did not want to be purchasing harmful synthetic products made with petroleum.

I have an entrepreneurial spirit, I am confident and driven and I am not one to shy away from risk. I had been running my own business in financial services along with an international NPO for almost 10 years when I decided to create VOES as a solution to a problem I had been personally facing as a vegan woman. As a woman who loves fashion and footwear it was my frustration and the lack of options available that inspired me to take it into my own hands and launch my own brand with ethically made sustainable designer footwear.

Desiree, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi, I am Desiree and I truly live from my heart. I focus my time and energy on endeavours that provide meaning and purpose and that truly light me up. I am a creative spirit and I live off of inspiration. I currently have two brands that I am running along with an international NGO that I co-founded with my best friend. I am the founder of a seaweed-based CPG food company called Kove which I now own and operate with 4 partners. It is so refreshing to work with people who truly value harmony, balance and sustainability in terms of life and the planet. My other company is a vegan fashion brand called Voes and Company which was founded from my vision to create a global icon for the movement based on love and compassion known as Veganism. The first product I have developed is a Chelsea boot made with Cactus leather. Moreover, I am currently Chair of the board for Ruben’s Shoes Society, a registered Charity which was created when my best friend met the boy she had been sponsoring for 7 years (Ruben) and learnt that children around the world cannot go to school unless they have shoes; along with many other elements including a uniform and school supplies. Since inception in 2013, we’ve sent 100,000 pairs of shoes around the world to help children access education and now have an Elementary school and Secondary school with over 550 students that we fund and operate in the Dominican Republic.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

I actually just completed the purchase of a business at the beginning of this year. The story begins in late spring of 2020 when was brought into a company as a partner to launch a CPG food brand. As a partner, I received a large number of founder’s shares and was also paid as an employee (VP of Sales and Marketing) to develop the food products and create the brand. The development of the food products was quite difficult and we had to overcome many different challenges, as a result, the timing for the launch of the products was taking too long and as new investors came into the company they began questioning the strategic direction. The company decided to focus on a different vertical and that it was no longer going to continue to fund the brand. In consequence, I was let go as an employee and given 6 weeks working notice. The company was going to essentially kill the brand that I had given my heart and soul to for the previous 2 years at a time when we were beginning to experience many wins and had momentum gaining on our side; I truly felt like it was a rocket ship about to take off. I talked to a good friend who is also in the CPG food space and she told me that we cannot simply let the brand die, that she loved the brand and that we should figure out a way to keep it alive. This spearheaded ongoing conversations which led to me negotiating with the company to exchange a certain number of my shares in the company in exchange for full rights of the brand and all of its assets including product inventory, raw ingredients, packaging, website, social handles, everything. Simultaneously, while negotiating with the company for ownership of the brand, I was working with my friend who had another friend and colleague in the food industry that was also interested in acquiring the brand. That other friend had two close friends who were talking about wanting to buy or start a food brand which led to all four of them being interested in acquiring the brand with me. In the end I had to manage two negotiations, first with the original company through an Asset Purchase Agreement and second with my four other new partners through a Shareholder Agreement which would allocate the value of the new company/brand, each partner’s investment, role, responsibilities and so on. The process from being officially let go to having a signed Shareholder agreement with four new partners (one who was a close friend, one who was a friend of my close friend, and two who were complete strangers but friends with my close friend’s friend) took just over 5 months. The most arduous part was all of the back and forth between all of the different lawyers and making sure all of the legal agreements were properly worded and in order. The two major foundational elements of this whole process for both deals were trust and faith.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

For 10 years I owned and operated a financial firm with my best friend Kelly. Our focus was life insurance planning for families along with life insurance and tax planning for business owners and employee health and dental benefit plans. We started the business in 2008 and although being self employed and running the company with my best friend provided me with many incredible benefits like freedom, working in a meaningful career, building incredible relationships, flexing my marketing muscles, learning, creating, etc, in my heart I knew I wasn’t an insurance person and was not meant to spend my life working in that industry. In the Spring of 2018, Kelly and I were listening to one of Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday podcasts; it was an episode with Amy Purdy (after losing both her legs at age 19 as a result of bacterial meningitis, Amy survived to lead a life of extraordinary accomplishments). During the podcast, Amy talked about viewing her life as a book and she said something along the lines of “if my life were a book, what would I want the next Chapter to be?”. Naturally, when the podcast finished, Kelly and I began talking about life, our futures, what we would want our next chapters to read, and what we are really passionate about; we both came to the conclusion that continuing to run and operate our business was not fulfilling our soul’s purpose. Furthermore, 5 years earlier, we had founded an international NFP called Ruben’s Shoes Society, and were essentially working 2 full time jobs, 1 running our company and 2 running the charity as full-time volunteers. There were two things I knew at the time; first our company was worth a significant amount of money because we had recurring revenue from all of the health and dental group plans we had set up for companies (group benefit plans pay insurance brokers a monthly or annual recurring commission based on the number of employees and the amount the company is paying for their plan). Second, I knew that pretty much every other registered Charity had paid employees working for the cause and very few were actually completely volunteer run. I knew if we wanted to keep Ruben’s Shoes sustainable for the long term, we would have to find a way to scale it and find funding to pay some employees, and of course if we were to pay employees, why wouldn’t those employees be us. We had no idea how to find funding but we knew if we sold our business we would have the funds to support ourselves and work to figure it out. Having been in the industry for 10 years, we immediately reached out to a couple of contacts that we knew were looking to grow their businesses. Just as fast, we immediately had 3 different firms vying to purchase our business and our block of clients. We spent a couple of weeks negotiating between the 3 of them working on the best deal that was right for us. In the end, we decided to go with the firm that intuitively felt the most aligned. Within 3 months of deciding we wanted to sell our business, we had an accepted offer and began the transition. The kicker and bonus to this story is that also immediately we received confirmation from one of our donors that they were going to increase their investment into Ruben’s Shoes and provide us with operational funding! We really took a leap of faith and were given wings to fly. The main lesson I learnt through this process is to follow your heart, follow your gut, listen to your intuition and trust the process.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.voesandcompany.com
• Instagram: @voes_and_co @koveocean @desireedupuis
• Linkedin: DesireeDupuis

Image Credits
Claire Garner Photography (for the personal black and white image of Desiree 2)