For anyone who’s ever dreamed of escaping reality to live in a fairytale for a little while, Tyson Leavitt is hoping to take your reservation this summer.
His Alberta company has been making high-end children’s backyard playhouses for the rich and famous for five years — including kids’ castles, playground pirate ships or tree houses — with some fetching up to a half-million dollars.
Now, the former landscaper from Lethbridge, Alta., is working on plans to open his first resort in the province this year, offering playhouse cottages that families can rent.
“We wanted to be able to do something that we could allow all families to be able to experience the magic of what we build,” said Leavitt, who owns Charmed Playhouses with his wife, Audy.
To those unfamiliar with the Leavitts’ work, or their TV show on TLC, the idea of spending a weekend in a playhouse with the kids might sound a bit more like a hardship than fun.
That is, until you see the playhouses they build — and the cottages they have planned.
WATCH | Take a look at what the resort plans to offer:
Not everyone can afford a six-figure custom playhouse like one of the Jonas brothers or basketball star Stephen Curry, so the Lethbridge company behind them is putting together its own family resort in southern Alberta. 3:47
A Cinderella story
Employing a team of 15 people, their high-end playhouses are built from wood. Artists sculpt Styrofoam to add embellishments like giant mushrooms or colossal tree stumps. There are towers and spires as well as slides, swings and climbing walls.
Clients have spent between $15,000 and $500,000 to get one, the Leavitts say, with buyers coming from as far away as China.
Customers — the ones they can talk about — include basketball superstar Steph Curry, pro golfer Jason Day and baseball’s Ryan Zimmerman.
As business tales go, Charmed Playhouses is a bit of a Cinderella story.
Tyson and Audy Leavitt, owners of Charmed Playhouses, stand in front of one of the cottages that will be part of their new resort in southern Alberta. (Tony Seskus/CBC)
“We kind of thought we might be able to convince people to spend $5,000 or $10,000 on a playhouse and it’s turned into people willing to spend a few hundred thousand dollars,” Audy Leavitt said. “So it was just as shocking to us as it’s been to anyone else.”
Making something accessible
But the Leavitts, who come from blue-collar backgrounds themselves, said they wanted to make something that was accessible to more families like theirs.
So they’re building “play cottages” for a resort that they’re striving to open as early as this spring.
Their strategy focuses on cottages built around storylines. One example is a cottage with a tower and a Rapunzel-like braid flowing from its window.
Comparable to a tiny house, the cottages can accommodate up to six people, come with a kitchenette and are made for year-round use.
“We’re going to have all different types of cottages at the resorts,” Tyson said. “Whether it’s a tree house or a storybook home or Rapunzel’s tower or half-ling houses or castles.”
The anticipated price of renting one of the cottages will be about $300 to $400 a day.
One of 15 employees at Charmed Playhouses, which makes luxury playhouses at its shop in Lethbridge, Alta., works on a tree made from polystyrene foam. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
Last July, Charmed launched a trial cottage near Waterton National Park in southern Alberta. It didn’t take long for the cottage to be booked all the way into October.
The new resort will be located in southwest Alberta’s Crowsnest Pass, about 150 kilometres west of Lethbridge. The ultimate plan is to have as many as 20 cottages available to rent.
Craving experiences over things
It’s difficult to know exactly what the tourism market will look like as the country gradually emerges from the pandemic — such as the distances people will be willing, or able, to travel — but Rachel Dodds, a professor of hospitality and tourism management at Ryerson University, believes some pre-pandemic trends will continue.
That includes families wanting to share unique experiences rather than purchasing things, she said.
“We crave things to do, experiences to have with our children, with our friends and families,” Dodds said in an interview. “If it’s unique and different and can somehow bring in some kind of learning, that’s even better.”
The cottages that Charmed Playhouses is building for the resort will be able to accommodate up to six people. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
Dodds pointed to Singapore’s Changi airport, where customers are paying up to $269 US per night to camp in a tent in its retail wing, a novel travel experience that’s proven popular and helping the airport improve revenues during the pandemic.
Closer to home, she noted the popularity of virtual visits to museums and attractions, like the Vancouver Aquarium, during COVID-19, demonstrating people’s appetite to learn and share experiences.
She expects interactive exhibits will again be big draws in the future, like Marvel’s Avengers-themed exhibition in Toronto. Everyone wants a “little bit of inspiration, a little bit of hope.”
“People are getting really creative right now and I love it,” she said.
Tyson and Audy Leavitt hope people will flock to their idea, too. For now, the focus is on getting ready for what they hope will be their spring launch.
“We’ve really believed in what we’re doing,” Audy said.
“That has kept us going through those hard times and … now we’re really, really grateful to be where we are — even though we have a long way to go.”
The company opened this trial cottage last summer at Alberta’s Waterton National Park for a test run of their resort idea. (Charmed Playhouses)
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
