Peak View

When we initially thought about starting Peak Interiors we hadn’t heard the term “social enterprise.”

Our idea, or rather our future clients’ ideas, for Peak Interiors came out of many meetings and interviews with people with disabilities over the years as part of conducting applied research projects.  An overwhelming number of people asked us a version of the question “why does assistive technology have to make my home look like a hospital?”

We didn’t have a good answer.

That question inspired us to look at what other businesses were doing here and around the world, and in fact inspired us to switch gears from health research consulting to full time product development and sales.  In other blog posts we talk about some of things we found (particularly in Sweden and Denmark ) but we decided to focus on trying to provide a good response to the question through importing, designing and producing our own brand of accessible home furniture.

The BC Centre for Social Enterprise defines social enterprise as “a business model whose goals, mission, and vision embrace social values and have a direct positive impact on the community.”

We also firmly believe in a user-centered model for determining the personal supports that a person brings in to their lives (the BC Coalition for People with Disabilities has developed a model for doing just that called the Participation Model for Personal Supports).

These ideas, along with some others in Bo Burlingham’s inspiring book “Small Giants”  have helped to guide how we are trying to grow and shape what our goals are for Peak Interiors, which hopefully will lead to Peak meeting the definition of a social enterprise.

These ideas have also helped shape where and how we market (e.g., donating a height adjustable kitchenette at the Victoria Disability Research Centre rather than developing another targeted mail-out or doing another trade show). We are also honored and excited about participating in the development of BC’s (and possibly Canada’s) first assistive technology co-operative (more about this in future posts).

We believe that a company, even a small one, can both operate successfully and truly serve its community in a positive way.