If you want to find out how to clone a tree, just ask Joyce Groote.

The president and CEO of Richmond, B.C.-based Holey Soles Holdings Ltd. makes it sound easy: Just collect a lot of DNA from a lot of tree cells, use enzymes to break them down, put a whole bunch of fragmented genes together, throw in some soybean genes and you can create a new species of lodgepole pine.

"I'm making it sound a lot easier for the timeframe," says Groote during an interview at her company headquarters.

It actually took Groote, a former geneticist, three years to build a tree from scratch. She gave root to Holey Soles, a company that started in her next-door neighbour's garage in Vancouver, much quicker.

Bayne Stanley, Business Edge

There are no holes in the career path Holey Soles president and CEO Joyce Groote has followed and her company is rolling right along.

The company has moved its Vancouver-area offices six times since it was founded in 2002 and now occupies 85,000-sq.-ft. digs in Richmond, as well as a 55,000-sq.-ft.

facility in Virginia. It also has offices in China, Belgium and Barbados, which is the base for its wholly owned subsidiary Lifestyle Products Inc.

Holey Soles manufactures, distributes and sells clog-like polymer foam and rubber-compound shoes distinguished by their holes. The closed-cell foam prevents bacteria from seeping in, while a rubber mixture provides extra bounce and more cushion on hardwood floors. The soles contain nubs that stimulate bloodflow while holes create airflow that keep your feet cool on hot days and warm on cold ones.

Billing itself as a lifestyle-products company, Holey Soles also peddles accessories to go along with the shoes. This year, the company aims to have $20 million in revenue after posting $11.5 million last year. Not bad, considering that Groote's initial investment was $80,000.

You could say Groote, who operates the company with husband Rick Walter, is a small-business owner who has left a big footprint. She discovered that being a business owner was a good fit after an epiphany - in the form of a pie in the face ...

* 1. How often have you moved?

"This is the 38th time I've moved (either home or business). I've moved around a lot. I'm used to having to adapt very quickly to new situations. So I can tell you, looking back, that I wasn't raised in any one place. But I grew up knowing how to fit in and to adapt to new situations virtually every second or third school year - which is becoming very useful to this company."

* 2. Why did you move around so much?

"I don't know. My parents had wanderlust? And I guess I inherited it, because I continue the process."

Joyce Groote

* 3. What did your parents do?

"My dad was an accountant and my mother was involved in public relations as well as accounting. I was the oldest (of three kids). I have two other sisters."

* 4. What was that like?

"Well, you've always got the oldest, the middle and the youngest. There are stereotypes that we always kind of fall into. I don't think our family was a lot different. We had myself, where my parents learned a lot of things bringing me up and then tried to translate it and they relaxed a bit as my other two sisters came along. My middle sister was a rebel and wanted to do everything different so that she would be her own person. My youngest sister grew up knowing how to go with the flow. My middle sister, unfortunately, passed away when she was 37, from cancer, but my youngest sister is in Etobicoke with two daughters."

* 5. How did you get interested in science?

"It's just one of those things that, when I was in late high school, I realized that I was just really fascinated with the world outside me, and I really wanted to understand how it worked. Science gave me a way to get there."

* 6. Which science particularly appealed to you?

"Genomics. I loved the thought that you could actually get into that level and understand being there and how to piece it together ... for genetic engineering. It just fascinated me."

* 7. Did you have aspirations to be a doctor?

"No, not a doctor. I don't like blood very much, so I don't think I wanted to be a doctor particularly in that (medical) sense of the word. There's no question that, in my earlier years, being a scientist, doing a PhD for a profession, definitely appealed to me. Then, when I did my science degree, I realized that there was a certain amount of science (that) was like working in the kitchen. I realized I liked the concept of it as opposed to the doing of it. In other words, it's one thing to think about scientific theory and the way you might conduct experiments. But the doing of experiments on a day-to-day basis was a little bit too much like kitchen work for me."

* 8. What were some of your early jobs before and after you completed your degrees?

"One of my jobs was to help the laboratory in Petawawa (Ont.) at the forestry institute there, to get a lab up and going so that it would have the capacity to become a really strong molecular lab ... Another job I did subsequent to that was at the University of Ottawa, which was trying to take a look at the genetic thicknesses of gluten that goes into bread, to see if we could make a slightly different crust. From there, I launched into working for the (federal) government in biotechnology, and started to look at the regulatory framework. Part of it was developing the framework for Canada. I was very much involved with that in the initial phases. Biotechnology, at that point, was very new for the government. If you think about it, biotechnology barely dates back to the 1970s. So it was really a chance for government to more fully understand where the science could go and what the (provincial) governments needed to do to make sure that it was regulated, so that the products were safe. They developed an overall principles framework that all of the governments followed. The (federal) government provided a lot of funding for different things so that they could better understand biotechnology. I was involved in those as well, and involved with watching for the first product commercial release. From there, I went to not-for-profit associations. The very first one was called the Biotechnology Communications Network (BCN). That was about trying to communicate to consumers, or the public, about what biotechnology was and how it affected them, in a very neutral, informative way. Then, I was headhunted to work for the Industrial Biotechnology Association of Canada (IBAC). That was running the organization on behalf of the companies that were across Canada. I then worked with another organization called the Canadian Institute for Biotechnology and we merged with ... IBAC (to become Biotech Canada)... . I ended up becoming the chair of what was called the global industry coalition. That group provided advice and expertise to the United Nations, but in an advocacy role. The United Nations was developing a protocol, what is typically called the Biosafety Protocol.

"(My role) was to provide information about how that protocol would affect safety. That was a lot of work. I was a spokesperson for that group. In fact, I'd been the spokesperson for the government and for industry for a long time. All of a sudden, one day, my world went black ... I realized my world was cold, creamy and had taste. I had just been pied. Global TV caught it. I was on national television with pie on my face. So did all of the print media and all of the radio. That was the activists' expression that they didn't like industry's stance on biotechnology. They certainly didn't like food (genetically modified organisms - GMOs). It was at the time of all the food GMO stuff. I think I was getting to the point where I was ready for something different.

That was pretty much the turning point. Everybody has a defining point in their career, I think, or their life, where something happens and it just helps to crystallize and make you refocus in terms of: Are you where you want to be? It makes you rethink where you want to go. And that was my point."

* 9. Where did you go?

"I developed my own 10-year business plan and decided that Ottawa wasn't the place where I could carry out my business plan. So I moved to Vancouver."

* 10. How did you come up with a shoe company?

"I didn't. I was actually working with a consulting company that I had created, called Crossing Sectors, the Life Science Angel Network and a venture capital company that we had also created, called Building Biotech VCC. My next-door neighbour (Anne Rosenberg) came to me. She had started this (company) out of her garage and said: 'Help!' She didn't know what to do next. Because I had been helping so many young companies get their feet on the ground, she was looking for the same kind of help, which was building a business plan, getting focused and looking at where to go next and, through that process, ended up lending her money so she could move from her garage into a 3,000-sq.-ft. facility. The loan ended up being turned into equity. Finally, at the end of that year, which was December 2004, I ended up buying the company."

* 11. Why did you decide to take over the company?

"Well, really, if truth be known, it was very difficult to work with the different shareholders that we had, because we were all at different levels in terms of business acumen. Essentially, I had offered her the opportunity to buy the company back, but she decided that she'd prefer to sell it. So I ended up buying it. It was a shotgun clause. The way the shotgun clause works, you set the fair market price and then it's up to them whether they want to buy it or sell it. Everybody has to be aligned and have the same vision and it requires a lot of capital investment. I was in the best position to effect that."

* 12. How much was your initial investment?

"Our initial investment was $80,000. We've had to put in about a half a million dollars. We leveraged RRSPs and our house. We had my husband's family, who have been absolutely fantastic at providing some help."

* 13. What were those early days like for you, considering that your background had been quite science-oriented up until then?

"Well, you know, it's interesting because, when you're running associations, it's very similar (to running a business) ... It's about having a business plan. It's about managing your staff. It's about reading the bottom line. It's a budget. You have activities against the budget. You need to make sure that you bring in X amount of revenues for sales. I have to tell you there's not a lot of difference between running a not-for-profit and running a company. The difference for running our company here is that I didn't have to report to a board. I just have to report to myself. That's a huge difference. It makes life much less complex. I found that it was more that I had to become familiar with the shoe world and familiar with shoes - in particular, these shoes. I had to learn a lot of things about producing these shoes. That's where the learning curve was. It was not about running a business. It was about: How do you source products in China? How do you ship products from China to Canada - or anywhere else in the world for that matter - in an efficient and effective manner? It was about understanding how to keep moving to the next step. When you move to a company that starts off at $60,000 a year and it goes to $11.5 million a year, you get to points where you inevitably keep bumping your head against your current structure and where you need to go, and understanding why you keep bumping your head and what you need to do. There's no question that takes some time. It takes the ability to step back.

"It takes the ability of your staff to move from being more generalists to specialists. Those are some of the challenges that we had to face."

* 14. Looking back, how big did you expect the company to grow?

"I expected it to continue growing along the lines that it is now, but I do have to say that, every year, we keep exceeding our expectations. No one could have prepared me for how quickly this has grown. I don't know that they can teach you. I certainly never learned in my MBA how to deal with a company that grows this quickly."

* 15. When did you know that it was going to be more than a garage-based building?

"In part, it was a gut feeling. You have to wear these shoes. When you wear them, you see the comfort. That in itself speaks. And just the functionality of the shoes.

The other thing is that it was a cool product. People kept coming to us and asking us for the product. It wasn't even a question of having to go out and sell. It was a question of almost turning down demand because, at that point, when our manufacturing was only at 800 pairs of shoes a day, we couldn't make enough of them. So we had to focus on the customers that we could replenish and managing our growth. But that certainly told the story."

* 16. Why did you decide to put a manufacturing plant in China?

"We started to buy them at first from a company in Quebec (Finproject.) The company just was unable to provide us with supply that we needed in colours and sizes, and the pricing was going up. They were providing supply as well to other companies, other competitors - a company called Walden's, Crocs, All Heart - and they just couldn't provide supplies to all of us anymore. We were frustrated and ended up going to China. One of the advantages of going to China is that it allowed us to modify our shoe from the original shoe. It was a good thing that we did do that because Croc ended up buying the Quebec manufacturer and cutting off supply to everyone else. It worked out quite well that we had the foresight to go there."

(Note: Holey Soles and Crocs have filed legal action against each other as part of a dispute related to copyrights and patents in Canada and the U.S.)

* 17. What ethical precautions do you take dealing in China, because there are a lot of activists who voice concerns about labour in China?

"I can show you pictures if you like. The employees work in a brand new building. The employees are all provided housing. It's clean. We personally go over there - frequently. No underage employees are allowed to work there. They really have stellar conditions. We've also established our working code of ethics here for the company, for internal staff. It's all in line with who we are and the kind of company that we are. It talks about respect (and) dignity. It talks about loyalty. It talks about providing to charitable foundations and charities or people in need. As an example, we donated 100,000 pairs of shoes to Soles for Souls, which is a charity organization that gives shoes to people in need. So a number of our shoes have been to Africa. We also gave shoes away to (hurricane) Katrina victims. That's the kind of company we are. We always think of ourselves as a business with a heart."

* 18. Do you think you're getting to the point where you might need to go public?

"We're certainly starting to look at innovative financing options and we're starting to think about succession planning on a whole number of levels for a whole number of our staff here. We're also investing in more depth in our people in our different departments, so we're bringing in new people continually to provide that depth. In terms of where we go eventually, there's no question that an IPO is something we'd strongly consider over the next few years. The first thing we would do is probably a private equity round (in the next year) to help us prepare for an IPO. We're probably looking (at) between $10-$15 million, in that range."

* 19. What is your advice to other people who start with a business in a garage and want to grow it the way your company has grown?

"The first thing I would say is, get a business plan together and know where it is you want to go, because without that focus, and understanding what that timeline is and what the livables are, you won't necessarily get there. Having said that, you need to be flexible and you need to understand when to walk away or when to grab hold of an opportunity. The other thing that I would say: You need to remember people. People are what make the company, not your product. If you don't invest in people from start to finish - or find someone that can - I don't know how you can build a company."

* 20. If you couldn't run your company anymore, what would you do instead?

"I think I would love to mentor younger women in this kind of situation and help them build companies for themselves. I'm really interested in seeing how I can mentor other women - when I have time. I don't have time yet."

Joyce Groote

* Title: President/CEO, Holey Soles Holdings Ltd.

* Born/raised/age: Etobicoke, Ont./Greater Toronto Area/49.

* Education: Bachelor of science and masters of science in genetics from the University of Alberta, MBA from University of Ottawa.

* Family: Married to Rick Walter, two stepdaughters, Brooke and Tess.

* Career: Groote has worked as a geneticist and held executive posts with biotech associations while also founding Building Biotech VCC and Crossing Sectors Inc. She became involved with Holey Soles in 2002 after a neighbour came to her for assistance.

* Moonlighting: Groote is a member of the Women Presidents Organization and has served on the boards and helped launch biotech groups, including the B.C. Biotech Organization, Bio Products Association and Life Sciences Angel Network.

* Passions: Squash, biking, walking, boating, playing piano and oboe, home renovating.

Holey Soles Holdings Ltd.

* Brass: Joyce Groote, president and CEO; Rick Walter, vice-president.

* Profile: Incorporated in 2003, Holey Soles started from a Vancouver garage. It now has 70 employees and offices in China, Belgium and Barbados. Shoes are sold in 35 countries under the Holey Soles brand and private labels. In addition to shoes, the firm sells accessories related to the footwear.

* Stats: The company generated revenue of $11.5 million last year and is aiming for $20 million this year.

* Company structure: Private holding company.

* Website: www.holeysoles.com

* HQ: 2440 Viking Way, Richmond, B.C., V6V 1N2

* Phone/Fax: (604) 248-3663/(604) 248-3664

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)