Local bike courier company sets out to help youth at risk and make a buck
National Post, July 11,2003
By Lorne Blumer
Richard Derham could have chosen an easier path for himself. Partnership at an English law firm. Advancement as a management consultant at a big corporation. Instead he has taken the road more bumpily traveled -starting up a business, Turnaround Couriers, whose bicycle messengers are all youth at risk.
"The reason I feel very passionate about this," Derham says at his Spadina Avenue office, "is we're doing something that hasn't been done before, as far as I'm aware."
Derham was a consultant at Toronto's Monitor Group before growing disenchanted with the corporate world. "I felt a little bit detached from the whole shebang," he says. He wanted to have a hands-on role in making a business succeed. He'd also become attracted to "venture philanthropy" - the idea that for-profit business could benefit disadvantaged people. Often, when leaving Monitor's office in the theatre district late at night he would encounter some of the street kids who hung around the area, bumming change and getting up to no good.
"They were articulate, they were switched on," Derham, 35, recalls. "I realized that there were a lot of kids who just wanted a bloody break."
So he dreamed up Turnaround Couriers. Apart from himself and a dispatcher, all staff would be young people struggling to get on their feet. Half of the profits would be returned to youth at risk through donations to social agencies and to funds created to help his staff advance in their careers or education.
Financing this vision was not easy. The bicycle courier business "doesn't exactly have the most glamorous reputation," Derham concedes. As far as the banks and credit unions were concerned, neither do first-time entrepreneurs without fixed assets to put up. But Derham lucked out with a $35,000 loan from an "angel investor" who believed in his enterprise and in Derham's willingness to throw in his savings and go without salary. Turnaround Couriers finally hit the road in October.
Staff are recruited primarily with the help of social agencies such as Evergreen and St. Christopher's House. But it's not a charity, Derham insists: "We deserve to be benchmarked against all the other companies doing exactly the same thing."
And not everyone can benefit from his enterprise. "We're not trying to help all street kids because we can't," Derham say's. His focus is on "Job-ready" people badly in need of someone to show confidence in them and to whom he can trust his clients.
People like Jay who was kicked out of his Etobicoke home at 16 and in the 10 years since has lived on the Street and in squats, occasionally getting by as a squeegee kid. Over time, he was able to end the hold drugs and alcohol had on his life, but steady income remained elusive.
Turnaround Couriers, he says. has "gotten me back on my feet so I'm not dependent on welfare or anything. I got a nice, big place that I can somewhat afford," not to mention a personal fleet of six bicycles from the dirt bike he uses to "play in the mud" on weekends to one he's built from scratch.
Jazz Khan, another of Durham's staff, has been on her own since she was 17. Now 21, she lives at Eva's Phoenix, a shelter for homeless youth, and has been working as a bike courier to store up cash while finishing film studies at the International Academy of Design and Technology.
Both Jay and Khan have only praise for their boss.
"I wouldn't rather work for anyone else," Jay says.
Derham's couriers make a commission of 60% - about average, he says. But unlike many competitors, he also pays them shortly after their deliveries and covers their Workers' Compensation premiums. Generally, the couriers make $70 to $80 a day, with high earners like Jay sometimes bringing in $100.
As his staff become self-sufficient, Derham hopes social agencies will be able to focus their energy on kids who need them most.
But first, he must stay in business. He's optimistic. In the past few months, calls have more than doubled from 15 to 35 a day, from about 240 clients. At this rate, Turnaround Couriers will reach 120 calls - the break-even mark by February.
Like any entrepreneur, Derham is thinking ahead to dramatic growth expanding operations to other areas, establishing other turnaround businesses - Turnaround Call Centres staffed by the blind, for instance - with half the profits again being directed back to the people who run them. He also hopes his company will operate as an informal recruiting agency, with his couriers being hired on by clients.
Jay and Khan, both aspiring filmmakers, have already gotten guidance from Turnaround's customers in the industry.
In the meantime, many of the 17 couriers Derham has employed, just as he'd wished, have come up with rent money and moved onto greater opportunities.
"I don't want to come across as holier than thou," he says, "but what we're doing is very much a third way. And I really hope we're going to plow a new furrow"
With luck, it'll be one that allows the boss to write himself a pay cheque now and then.