What’s good for the Goose…

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/10/2011 (5108 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AS the third generation president of Canada Goose, it’s hard to tell if Dani Reiss is more proud that he’s made the family business such a phenomenal success, or that he’s created an iconic Canadian brand.

Reiss was in Winnipeg this week visiting one of only two production facilities the Toronto-based outerwear company owns.

Since he took over the company in 2000, sales have grown 2,500 per cent to the $100 million-a-year range.

“You can count on one hand the number of Canadian global apparel brands,” he said. “But there is only one Canadian global apparel brand that is 100 per cent made in Canada — that’s Canada Goose.”

Reiss acknowledged many people said he was has crazy when he started marketing his $600-plus parkas to fashion-conscious urbanites.

The 37-year-old philosophy and English lit grad from the University of Toronto said maybe it’s because he’s not an industrial engineer, can’t sew and was never groomed to run the business that he has been able to take it to such heights.

“It took a different outlook to do this,” he said. “If I was someone with an MBA background or something like that, I might not have been able to see this.”

Bob Silver, president of Winnipeg-based Western Glove Works, one of the largest blue jean manufacturers in the world, can relate to the importance of an unorthodox perspective on a traditional business.

“He was smart enough not to listen to the people who told him he’s crazy,” Silver said.

“I’m reminded of what my great-uncle said to me — you’re too stupid to know what you can’t do.”

In the process, Reiss has created a new apparel category — premium outerwear.

“Because we are made in Canada, we don’t compete on price,” Reiss said. “We make best-in-class product — the best jackets and the warmest jackets in the world.”

Now Canada Goose keeps about 12 factories across the country busy, but only two of them are company-owned. In January of this year it acquired Engineered Apparel, a successful Winnipeg technical apparel manufacturer that had been doing a lot of work for Canada Goose.

It has a workforce of about 130 people, a number that has grown by about 40 over the past several months.

“This is a world class production facility,” said Reiss.

And even though sales are growing dramatically — up 85 per cent last year, tripling in the United States — and there are expectations for 50 per cent-plus increases this year and next, the company is not going to dramatically increase production to keep up.

“Demand will continue to outstrip supply,” he said.

That’s partially because it continues to be a challenge to find skilled garment-industry workers, even though employment in the sector across the country is down dramatically from its heyday in the 1990s.

And Reiss is not about to buckle to the consultants who keep asking him when he’s going to set up shop in China.

“A Canada Goose jacket is like a Swiss watch,” he said. “You can’t make a Swiss watch in China. I think we are in the same category. There are some brands that are manufactured exactly where they should be.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca