N.B.’s ‘Dangerous’ Dress Shirt Maker Heading to G20 Entrepreneurship Summit
FREDERICTON– A Fredericton fashion entrepreneur is heading to Argentina next month for the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance Summit.
Jeff Alpaugh, co-founder of Jeff Alpaugh Custom, a company that creates ‘dangerous’ custom-made dress shirts, will be joining other entrepreneurs from Canada and around the world for the G20 YEA Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina from September 20-21. Alpaugh was the only Canadian entrepreneur from New Brunswick chosen to go.
The G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance (G20 YEA) is a global network of approximately 500,000 young entrepreneurs and the organizations that support them, including Futurpreneur Canada. This year’s summit will focus on the educational needs of present and future entrepreneurs, as well as the business opportunities in the education technology space. After each summit, a detailed communiqué is given to the G20 leaders and other bodies.
Alpaugh says he learned of the G20 YEA from a customer who came into his store last Christmas.
“He lives in Newfoundland but he’s from New Brunswick. He was explaining how he had started out owning a gym and then it blew up into him doing wellness programs for oil rigs,” says Alpaugh. “He walked me through how it came from something very small to something very big. One of his major catalysts was attending the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance Summit.”
The man showed Alpaugh the website and the application process, which was a three-minute video where applicants answer a few questions. Alpaugh decided to give it a shot.
“I wouldn’t say it was the best video I’ve ever done or something I spent a tonne of time on,” he says. “I kind of had that ‘I probably won’t get selected’ mentality, which is not my usual mentality.”
They got back to him right away. He was going to Argentina.
Alpaugh hopes to be a strong voice for New Brunswick and the Maritimes at the summit. He says he’s been chatting with business leaders, politicians and others in the space to get their insight to form his recommendations for the summit.
“A lot of my ideas are probably a little more Maritime centric. That is my perspective,” says Alpaugh.
He says he will advocate for subsidies for startups that will allow them immediate global access without incurring the costs of operating pre-scale, particularly when it comes to shipping and online presence. He’ll also advocate for tax models that incentivize investing in startups in order to get the resting capital working. Entrepreneurship education in school will be another big thing he’ll advocate for.
“I think our schooling system was built to produce people who could be citizens in a republic and work at industrial factories. Now, the situation has changed. People now need to be more self-reliant and there are more people responsible on a day-to-day basis for their own income and survival. I think it makes more sense for the education system to [reflect that],” says Alpaugh.
“A little bit more practical entrepreneurship, even just life-lesson type stuff at an earlier age, as opposed to forcing people to take calculus and stuff that’s not going to come in handy out there in the real world.”
While in Argentina, he plans to make some business contacts as well.
“I’m looking at some of the different clothing companies down there and I’m hoping to meet with a few key folks,” he says. “I can’t say I have super concrete plan, but when it’s time for me to have an arm of my business in Argentina, I want to already have some of those relationships initiated.”
Though he will be one of many entrepreneurs from around the world at the summit, he hopes his presence and ideas will have a positive impact.
“I hope that I make some sort of a positive impact or impression on one influential person and that has a positive effect for entrepreneurship in the Maritimes,” he says.