Vernon business suffers ‘total loss’ in Kelowna fire

Feb 16, 2022 | 2:00 PM

A Vernon-based company was one of the businesses impacted by the major fire at the Blue Heights business complex on Highway 97 in Kelowna.

Innerspace Watersports owner Chad Edwards tells Vernon Matters, they sustained a “total loss” in Tuesday’s blaze that also caused significant damage to five other businesses. Innerspace sells outdoor recreation equipment such as paddle boards and kayaks.

Innerspace Watersports in Kelowna before Feb. 15 fire. (Submitted photo/Chad Edwards)

Edwards said the dollar figure on the loss is not known at this point, and the future of the Kelowna store is uncertain.

“There is so many different forms of loss, but the one thing we can comment on looking at the paperwork based on the last year’s inflation rate to go along with logistics such as shipping and all the information we’ve received from suppliers in the last 90 days is massive increases on the cost of product,” said Edwards. “So at this point, mathematically, financially, it doesn’t look like a rebuild will be at anytime soon unless products in our area become more readily available, pricing comes down and shipping logistics to restock a business.”

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Chad Edwards, Innerspace Watersports owner (Photo credit: Innerspace Watersports)

Edwards said they were insured and are working on the insurance claim.

“We’ve been looking at documents and paperwork to see what kind of coverage there is on the insurance side of things. There is a lot of greyness on the coverage of the insurance on the amount of loss because it’s a total loss.”

Innerspace also has a store and its head office in Vernon, and Edwards said they are trying not to affect their five staff members financially, so the company is moving the Kelowna staff to the Vernon location and continuing to operate.

“We’re going to issue the additional customer support through our Vernon location which is our head office. We own the building here; the building we had in Kelowna was a lease building. We’re having our 40th anniversary this year as a company and it’s my 25 years of being here. Our Kelowna store would have been having its 13th anniversary this year.”

The business uses its staff on a rotational basis between the two outlets, which are 40 minutes driving time apart.

“The Vernon store is head office, kind of like a small distribution, and our Kelowna store was laid out as more of a pristine display store to make sure the store kept a higher level of presentability based on its size, in other words, trying to display more products,” Edwards explained. “So instead of having nine of the same object on the wall, for the most part, it would be a very diverse selection of stuff because everything we sell is pretty specialized.”

Fire damage to Blue Heights business park in Kelowna. (Photo credit: Kelowna10)

Edwards said their focus now is to let people know they are continuing with day to day operations and customers can visit the Vernon store, their website, or their social media sites.

“We prefer to still do [business] old fashioned via telephone, or come into the location, or email, or social media contact like Instagram or Facebook. We don’t have an e-commerce website based on the specialty of our products. We carry about 9,000 different objects that constantly either change or develop.”

Edwards found out about the fire around 5:30 Tuesday morning from a Kelowna customer who was driving by, saw the flames and sent him a photo.

He held a meeting with his Vernon staff that morning and went down to the fire site around noon.

“The photos at first always give you hopes and dreams that there is stuff that is maybe not compromised and salvageable, and obviously when we rolled up, the only thing left was the exterior wall. There was no roof, no backing and all the product, you couldn’t even tell what it was.”

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

“It was a very large complex. It was an older building. It looks like from what we can see, a lot of the fire rapidly spread through the wooden, ceiling trusses,” Edwards remarked.

While still working through the insurance, Edwards realizes the total loss of their display store is a big blow.

“You are losing the ability from a lot of angles: everything from your advertising, to your internet, to your website, to your traffic flow, to the exposure. How many times are people going to pull in that park and see a burned down building and say ‘Oh, they’re no longer here?'” wondered Edwards.

by Pete McIntyre

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