Sawyer Hannay drew on his hockey experience when he took his shot on Dragons' Den.
The former Halifax Mooseheads defenceman made it through a rigourous audition and screening process to earn his chance to pitch his clothing line Country Liberty to a panel of business moguls on the popular CBC show. At stake was a six-figure cash injection from the business leaders who were judging him and his growing enterprise on camera, so there was no shortage of pressure on the 28-year-old entrepreneur.
"When I first walked out it was a much bigger space than I was expecting so that was a bit of a curveball and there were all the cameras and bright lights shining on me as I walked out to where I was supposed to stand," said Hannay, whose episode will be on CBC this Thursday. "I was a little nervous for probably the first 15 or 20 seconds. You might even be able to hear it in my voice when it airs because I remember very consciously feeling those nerves. But after those first 20 seconds were behind me, I settled in and felt pretty comfortable."
Hannay isn't allowed to disclose the outcome of his pitch - for obvious reasons - but said he was satisfied he put in his best effort during his one-hour session in front of the six business leaders.
"I did feel fairly confident, simply because I know my business inside and out. It's my passion and my baby so I felt good about that part of it," said Hannay, who was drafted in the seventh round by the Vancouver Canucks in 2010. "I knew that they would challenge me and I did my very best to prepare for that and anticipate questions. I thought about what kind of comments they might have or the different parts of my business they would pick to talk about, so I was able to prepare a lot of those answers beforehand.
"With hockey, you know how important it is to rise to the occasion with things like a playoff game or a championship or do-or-die type of situation. I had a lot of similar emotions - that little bit of nervousness mixed with some excitement but also feeling prepared to rise to the challenge. There was a lot I was pulling from my hockey days."
Hannay played three seasons for the Mooseheads before wrapping up his QMJHL career with 47 games for the Victoriaville Tigres in 2012-13. He later played for the St. Thomas Tommies in the AUS while he worked towards his degree in business and economics.
He also had a brief pro career but realized his future was elsewhere so he launched Country Liberty while still in school. The concept was to make clothes that reflected the casual, rural lifestyle from his hometown of Rexton, N.B., where nature and campfire gatherings dominated his social life.
"We have distribution now across Atlantic Canada and Alberta," he said. "Before COVID we were working on some more distribution partnerships that have just been frozen for now because of all the uncertainty. Our online presence is continuously growing and the business is growing year after year, which is very exciting. We've grown it in terms of collaborative partners as well. We're now working with Molson with one of their Coors brands and I'm working with the Cavendish Beach Festival very closely. It's been a few years I've been doing that and sponsoring their events and exclusively vending at their events."
Hannay also branched out to real estate this summer, opening an eight-cabin complex he named Liberty Village.
"That's here in Rexton, right off the river and about 15 minutes from the ocean," he said. "It's just a quaint area and the whole goal of it was to offer our customers a physical Country Liberty experience. We opened in June and it was obviously a tricky year to open that kind of new business but we did it anyway and we had a pretty good summer."
