An Iqaluit art dealer who uses the internet to sell Inuit art has won a $5,000 award as eBay Canada's Entrepreneur of the Year.
Bryan Hellwig sells unique pieces of art made by Northern artists and his website, Northerncollectables.biz, boasts he has Cape Dorset artists working directly for the company.
An avid northern art collector, Hellwig said he was buying Inuit art for his personal collection from eBay when he discovered the auction site a couple of years ago.
"I'm really intrigued by Inuit art and I really like Inuit art, so actually I was buying for myself," Hellwig told CBC News in a recent interview, recalling his first year on eBay.
"However, as anybody knows, collecting Inuit art can get expensive after a while," he added. "So it sort of snowballed into ... selling as well, so that way I can keep some of the real nice pieces that I've come across."
Hellwig said he gets daily e-mail notices from "just about every auction house in North America that has anything to do with, or [is] selling, any type of Inuit or northern type of work."
But Hellwig, who also runs a recycling business in the Nunavut capital, said he spends only several hours each week selling Inuit art online.
"It's not a full-time business, per se," he said. "For the few hours I spend on the computer a week doing it, yeah, it's OK. I enjoy it."
Ebay also named youth, environmental and working mother entrepreneurs of the year.
The winner of the young entrepreneur award was Matt Oehmen, 23, of Ottawa, who runs honestredsrecords, a business that sells rare records online.
Oehmen discovered the online market for rare albums when he looked at selling his own copy of the Beatles' Abbey Road.
Other winners were:
Marcello Biocchi of Montreal, who resells vintage sport jerseys through eBay with a store slogan: 'Threads so sweet, you'll forget you're recycling.'Jennifer Fiander of Hampton, N.B., who created a book for caregivers of special needs children that she sells online.
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