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August 10, 2025 - 4:00 AM
You might have heard of some of these companies, or driven past a sign with their name on it in Kamloops and the Okanagan.
Here are some of the back stories and figures to match.
It turns out if you have a small family business, and run it well for a few decades or a century, you can turn a tidy profit, or you can just come up with a really popular app or website.
Richie Bros.
Ritchie Bros started as a small family-run furniture store in Kelowna. The Ritchie brothers held their first auction in 1958 to sell off surplus furniture to pay a bank debt. The auction went well and so they kept doing them. In 1963, they held an auction that sold $600,000 worth of equipment.
Now, the company is the world’s largest industrial auctioneer with sites in 13 countries and customers around the world.
Ritchie Bros. Auctioneer's has a market cap of $28 billion.
Gorman Brothers
Gorman Bros is another Okanagan family business that has grown into a multi-million dollar machine. In 1949, John and Ross Gorman ran into trouble when their orchards froze so they decided to start making fruit boxes in their dad’s shed.
The lumber business ended up being more profitable than running an orchard so they invested in mills and eventually other timber companies and became the Gorman Group.
Gorman Bros recently purchased the Weyersaeuser’s facility in Princeton for $120 million.
Gorman Bros Lumber’s revenue is $34 million, but that’s just one of the group’s numerous companies.
Tolko Industries
Tolko Industries was started by Vernon's Thorlakson family more than 65 years ago. The company’s 40-acre former mill site in downtown Kelowna is so large the City of Kelowna has a 30 year plan for how it’s going to be developed.
Tolko brings in roughly $733 million in revenue and has more than 1,000 employees.
Kal Tire
Kal Tire was started in Vernon by Tom Foord in 1953 as a regular service station. Now, it has more than 270 locations and services 150 mine sites around the world. Some mining truck tires can go for $20,000 a piece.
Kal Tire’s estimated revenue is about $1.4 billion.
Club Penguin
The beloved kids’ video game site Club Penguin sold to Disney back in 2007 for $700 million. The site’s cofounder Lane Merrifield is a Kelowna local, and his sister Renee Merrifield used to be Kelowna’s MLA. Club Penguin officially shut down several years ago, but there are still some sites where you can play it.
Lane Merrifield was on the reality TV show Dragon’s Den.
KF Aerospace
Barry Lapointe founded KF Aerospace in Kelowna in 1970, and now it employs more than 1,000 people and is part of a $10 billion deal to make spy planes for the military.
If you’ve ever been to the KF Centre for Excellence aviation museum near the Kelowna airport you’ve seen some cool planes and a hint of the company’s reach and influence in the city.
KF Aerospace’s latest revenue is around $160 million, according to RocketReach.com.
Mark Anthony Group
Mark Anthony Group was started by Anthony von Mandl who also owns numerous wineries like Mission Hill Family Estate in West Kelowna.
Forbes estimated that von Mandl’s company, which includes iconic beverages like Mike’s Hard Lemonade and White Claw Hard Seltzer, made around $3.3 billion in 2024.
Plenty of Fish
Markus Frind, owner of Frind Estate Winery, made his money in tech by starting the dating app Plenty of Fish. If you're familiar with the swiping world of internet dating, Plenty of Fish uses the same concept. The app sold for $575 million back in 2015. These days the app isn’t even in the top ten for most popular dating apps.
Like a lot of millionaires who enjoy a fine wine, Frind opened up his own winery in West Kelowna.
Jealous Fruits
Jealous Fruits is the biggest cherry producer this far north in North America. It has 1,312 planted acres and makes $33.3 million a year.
The company was started by the Geen family who have been growing cherries in the Okanagan since 1904. David Geen created Jealous Fruits in 2008, continued to scale up the business and he's the CEO.
It went from a family farm to a fruit empire with 25 farms and a 140,000 square foot packing facility. It employs around 1,200 staff and 1,000 pickers to produce up to 7,000 tonnes of cherries a year.
New Gold
New Gold owns the New Afton mine 10 kilometres west of Kamloops. It was built for $760 million and produces 85,000 ounces of gold and 75 million pounds of copper each year.
New Gold also owns the Rainy River gold and silver mine in Ontario.
New Gold’s revenue in 2024 was $1.32 billion and its CEO Patrick Godin makes around $3 million to $4 million a year.
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