Meet our founder, Harvey Poon!
Harvey is the heart of our business, and the reason for vbs apparel’s existence. He’s the one who got us started as Volleyball Stuff in 1999, and it was from his foundation that we’ve been able to grow into what we are today. We sat down with Harvey recently to get to know him a little better and trace that journey through the years. We’re excited to give you this look behind the scenes at where Harvey has taken us and where we’re going from here.
Q: How did this journey into volleyball begin?
Harvey: My son Ryan began playing volleyball in junior high school, and I wanted to buy him a pair of volleyball shoes. The only place to find a quality pair was at the Volleydome. You had to go through the Volleydome, pass through a door, and enter a trailer, which was the store. It wasn’t even three meters wide. There was a wall with knee pads, and it was dark; you couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t believe this was the only place with any volleyball equipment.
Then Ryan went on to play club volleyball in the Volleydome, and I got to interact with them more. Eventually, I joined the Volleydome staff because I thought it was a terrific concept for a franchise opportunity. So, I made a couple of proposals. None of them were accepted by the owner, and I asked, “Well, what else is there to do?” That’s when he said he would sell me the equipment side of the Volleydome. I bought it and operated it from the Volleydome for about 4 – 5 years.
Ryan joined the company after the 2008 fiscal crisis. I must admit, the reason why we’ve expanded this rapidly is because of the ideas he brought to the table along with Sanjiv (another member of our leadership team). Sanjiv joined us two years after Ryan.
We moved out of the Volleydome during the pandemic to a warehouse. It was a small warehouse and then from that warehouse to the current warehouse. In this warehouse, we leased one bay and now we have three!
Our first store in the Calgary Volleydome
You were planning to retire, and then suddenly you’re thinking of starting a franchise and expanding a business. How did your family take it?
My wife knew all along that I needed something to do. I’m not one to sit at home and watch TV and garden, although I do still garden. I don’t think it came as a surprise. I told my wife that I was going to do this interview, and she said you must tell them about the boxes of T-shirts and things we had in our kitchen. Because in the beginning, we used to heat press in our kitchen. We just put the team’s name and number on the back, and it was mostly on T-shirts. That’s how it started, and she wanted me to mention that.
So, Volleyball Stuff became vbs apparel, what was that transition like?
Well, in the beginning, it was Volleyball Stuff because that was all we did. What I liked about it was that we were experts in volleyball, and we were good at doing volleyball. Sanjiv started getting customers who played basketball and soccer. When we started getting more orders from sports outside volleyball, we didn’t want to approach a basketball team and say that the name of our company is Volleyball Stuff. So that’s how vbs apparel came in. Both Volleyball Stuff and vbs apparel are registered trademarks of the same parent company.
In the beginning, we used to heat press in our kitchen. We just put the team’s name and number on the back, and it was mostly on T-shirts. That’s how it started.
When you look at your journey, in retrospect, at what point did you realize that this could turn into something big?
We were operating at the Volleydome. We generally sold things from the shop that was inside the Volleydome, and customers who would come in had heard of us from word of mouth around Alberta and Saskatchewan. We got a couple of good customers from BC as well. But it was really when Ryan joined the company that things started moving, then Sanjiv joined us, and we started growing. We decided to open a branch in BC because Sanjiv was willing to move, keeping in mind how young and inexperienced they were, they took a good hold of the business.
What qualities do you value in your employees?
We value teamwork at vbs apparel. Everyone, from the back end of the company to the management, understands the concept of teamwork and the work ethic that comes with being a part of a team. In sports, to succeed everyone must pitch in. I would say teamwork is the main reason vbs apparel has grown so fast. That could be the reason why most people who work with us have a background in sports. Because they play sports and they’ve been on the other side; they know what it is like to get the team apparel late or a uniform piece missing from their order. They know how to resolve it and keep the customer happy. Because that is the end goal, customer satisfaction.
Ryan Poon, Harvey Poon, and Sanjiv Jasra
What was your childhood like?
Most of my non-school time was spent on playing sports or at the restaurant. We rarely had family meals. We tried, but mealtimes were usually the busiest at the restaurant and so, whoever was free we would eat together at the back.
I grew up in a small town, we would play all the sports there were. And if it wasn’t sports, we were outside doing something. We had a small rink in our backyard where we played hockey for hours.
I’ve participated in 10 national championships in hockey and won 5 gold medals so the early training seems to have paid off. That was what it was like growing up in a small town; I wish our kids could have had this; it was the best. We had a strong school program as well and a good athletic team. My brother and I were in the high school choir too.
The Poon Family in 1967– Harvey Poon, back row second from left. Credit: The Stettler Independent
What was a valuable lesson you learned from your parents?
My dad was just kind to everybody. It did not matter who; he was kind to a fault. An example was he didn’t want to close the restaurant at midnight because that is when the bars close, and the crowd from the bar comes into the restaurant to have dinner. His reason for doing this was never about the additional income but that they needed a place to eat.
He would have two days every year where we had special menu, Chinese and Western, and all the proceeds from those days would go to a charity.
He was the first town councilor of Chinese descent in Canada. One of the actions that he took that had a great impact was him bringing in a recreation director, which was almost unheard of at the time in a small town. That’s why Stettler has produced so many good teams for such a small town. My dad has had the biggest impact on me. He was very generous with his time, very wise and my biggest role model for sure.
What’s something you could speak on for hours?
I love talking about hockey. I love talking about what the kids are doing. I am proud of what our kids have started to do with their lives and in the lives of our grandkids. That’s what I would talk about, our family.
What is a piece of advice you would give to the younger generation?
My father taught me to do things with integrity and be a good person and that is a principle I’ve carried with me throughout. We were the only Chinese family in town, and he would say that everyone was keeping an eye on everything we did, which is why we needed to be honest, have that integrity to perform well and just be a good person. That’s one thing we’re trying to impart into the business side of things as well.
Where do you see vbs apparel in the coming years?
Since the pandemic, many businesses fell because it was too hard on them to keep up in this hard business climate. The costs are going up, the cost of labour is going up, the cost of goods is going up and people don’t want to pay more than necessary. You have to be good at your business to continue to grow the way we’ve done the last three years. I don’t expect explosive growth in the coming years, but in the next three to four years, we will easily be twice as big as we are right now. We’ll have to move again, and we just renovated! I think the renovation was a big positive change for the office. It’s a more professional look. I wanted the employees to walk in and say, “this looks nice!” I wanted them to have that simple positivity when they came in.
In sports, to succeed everyone must pitch in. I would say teamwork is the main reason vbs apparel has grown so fast.
Do you have anything else you would like included?
Well, I’m proud of what we’ve done here. It is incredible, the team that we have put together here (vbs apparel). You look around and you can’t believe the high quality of character of everybody that’s here and that’s again what we’re trying to build, the character of our team. Because if you build your team with the right characteristics, then everything else will fall into place.
You got a lot more out of me than I was planning to tell! But I’m glad this is being done; it’s very important to document history. To see how it all started, especially when you look back. I just got my grandfather’s 63-page autobiography that he wrote in Chinese, and it was translated. This was my mother’s father, and it’s incredible to read. It has his journey to Canada and my grandmother, pregnant with my mother, my mother being born in Vancouver. It was truly amazing to read his story. And our stories will be a continuation of his and all this that we’ve done here, will all be a part of it. vbs apparel is here because of the decision that he took to move to Canada; it’s incredible when you think about how connected everything is.
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