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“The growth is quite amazing and they are working from home and doing national and international business,” she said.

Vancouver Sun

Kelsey Rush is something of a poster child for the new rural entrepreneur. Rush runs a bikini design and manufacturing business from her home on Gabriola Island with her twin sister Monica, who works from her home in the Dominican Republic.

“There are a lot of entrepreneurs who work online on the island,” said Rush, co-owner of Bikini Empire, an enterprise that has absorbed nearly every inch of the modest house she shares with her fiance. “The beauty of the Internet is that you can work from anywhere, it doesn’t really matter where you are. Vancouver is only 20 minutes away by seaplane, so it doesn’t take long for me to get there, go to the factory and check on things.

“The whole house is my studio now,” she laughed. “The good thing is that swimwear is so tiny, it’s easy to store. Our house is small, but we can keep all of our inventory here and still live in the middle of nowhere.”

Rush lives on a 12-hectare property that they own jointly with two other couples that live out of eyeshot. Just 29, Rush is mortgage-free.

“I always tell people, it’s like a commune, but with no ideology,” she said. “We eat together once or twice a week and there is a big garden that we all share. It’s just a good neighbourly relationship.”

Bikini Empire’s designs are manufactured in Vancouver, which requires Rush to fly over anywhere from once a week in season to once a month in the off season. About half their sales come from her e-commerce site and half are wholesale orders for stores across Canada. To reduce travel, Rush relies on a private seaplane courier service to ship product samples — valuable single-copy mockups of bikini designs — to the manufacturing facility.