The number one priority is to give back and to support Canada through this

In light of the COVID-19 emergency, we’ve temporarily suspended our regularly scheduled series of conversations with Canadian CEOs. But we’re not going away. Instead, we’re going to pivot to the health emergency itself. We’re going to explore the impact on companies and workers across the country. And we’re going to find out how business leaders are responding to crisis.

Dani Reiss, President & CEO of Canada Goose, discusses the company’s retooling of their Canadian manufacturing lines toward the production of Personal protective equipment (PPE), the impact of the pandemic on their operations in China, and why there’s still reason to be hopeful.

Transcript

Goldy Hyder:
I’m Goldy Hyder of the Business Council of Canada, and this is a special edition of Speaking Of Business. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re tracking the impact of the virus on Canadian companies, and we’re reaching out to business leaders to find out how they and their employees are responding. Right now a growing number of companies are answering the call to ramp up production of much needed medical equipment to fight the virus. You may have heard the acronym, PPE, personal protective equipment for our healthcare workers. One of those businesses is Canada Goose, the iconic winter outerwear company that frankly doesn’t need an introduction. It’s retooling its production facilities in Toronto and Winnipeg to make scrubs and patient gowns for Canadian hospitals. Dani Reiss is the president and CEO of Canada Goose, and he joins me now on the line. Dani, great to have you on.

Dani Reiss:
Thanks, Goldy, great to join you, and happy to chat about these difficult times.

Goldy Hyder:
Well, look, indeed they are difficult times, but this is when leadership can really rise to the occasion, and you and so many others are doing just that. So in a normal day, we would talk about winter coats, but let’s forget the winter coats. You’re suddenly in the medical gear business. What made you decide to do this, and how’s it going?

Dani Reiss:
In my opinion, and I think in many people’s opinions, the responsibility of business at times like this to step up and help support society and community and help us all get through this together. Because after all, we’re all in this together. At Canada Goose we employ approximately 20% of the cut and sew workforce in Canada, so there really is no one better positioned to step in and make personal protection equipment for Canada. And so, it’s going well. We ramped up really quickly.

Goldy Hyder:
Was it challenging. Was it challenging to make a change in direction? It’s not like you’re using fur anymore or anything. How difficult was it to make that switch?

Dani Reiss:
For us, making a garment is making a garment. We have lots of sewing machines, we’ve got capacity, we have pattern makers. Really we had to just figure out the steps that we had to take in order to do it. And the big decision was deciding to just do it. That was one of the big first decisions that we took, and it was before we knew we would get any support from any level of government, local, provincial or federal. We just said we’re going to make this stuff, because personally I knew people in senior levels in hospitals, I spoke to people. I knew what the demand was. Other people in our company knew what the demand was. And we knew that this sort of equipment, people were really really short on and it was really required. We knew it would be a requirement and we didn’t want to wait. Government has to go through its processes to get itself organized and that’s what it needs to do and has been doing, and we decided to move ahead on our own just to make the product.

Dani Reiss:
So we’ve been manufacturing products since Tuesday, and we’ll start shipping products out on Monday. The first tranches of goods that we’re making we’re actually donating on our own.

Goldy Hyder:
Well, that’s amazing. That’s quick turnaround. In many ways, this is akin to a war, isn’t it? It’s a wartime effort. When you read history, you see all the things that industry did back in the world wars to respond. This is a very different kind of a war, it’s a war on a virus, but clearly you and others are stepping up to do what you can do. It sounds great. You said shipments coming out as early as next week. Are you planning for the long haul here? What’s your sense of how long this could go on?

Dani Reiss:
Well, we’re like anybody, none of us know how long this is going to last. Currently, I think the current speculation is things will lock down for another four weeks. People speculate eight to 12 weeks. We really don’t know how long it’s going to last. We’re prepared to manufacture personal protective equipment for as long as we need to be to support Canada, and in fact, we’d be more than happy to export some as well. We feel that that is our obligation to do that, and that’s what business needs to be focused on at this time. We’ve shifted our focus of our business to doing that. Obviously there are other things that businesses have to do, we have to conserve cash and watch inventory levels, and take all the normal responsible business decisions.

Dani Reiss:
But I think that for us, the number one priority is to give back and to support Canada through this. We think we are uniquely positioned to do that. We’re prepared to do it for as long as we have to, and we’ve been getting great collaboration from the government, and we’ve been getting commitments from them for goods. We’re doing this all, by the way, at materials plus labor, basically. Not even including our overheads. It’s bigger than all of us, and I think that if business responds across the board in this kind of way, I think that we stand a much better chance of coming out of this much stronger together. And then going from there, wherever and whenever that happens to be.

Goldy Hyder:
Does it help that your facilities are right here in Canada? Winnipeg and Toronto? You and I were together what seems like just the other day watching a Raptors game, and I guess we won’t be doing that for a while, but you were telling me about how great it is that your employees and your facilities and manufacturing is based right here in Canada. Does that help?

Dani Reiss:
Yeah, absolutely. It helps because we’re able to acquire the raw materials. It’s fabric, but it’s fabric that we don’t normally use. We’ve been able to acquire it quickly and ramp up quickly. Our time to market, as you can see, is extremely fast because of that. We have employees who want to come back to work. Obviously it’s their choice in this case. The facilities are not as full as they used to be because of social distancing and because of all the requirements that we have to meet and we want to meet. We want to be very careful protecting our employees. Obviously it’s our number one concern. But being able to have eight factories across Canada, we have the capacity to make tens of thousands of units a day if we reach maximum capacity, and we’re more than prepared to do that.

Goldy Hyder:
Well, it’s an interesting point, because obviously safety is paramount for every business, and it’s clear that you’ve had to adjust and be compliant with the requests for physical and social distancing. Which means of course that you’re going to have some employees that are not working right now and will be impacted by the store and manufacturing closures. What are you able to do to help them through this, Dani?

Dani Reiss:
We’re an international company, so we have employees in Canada, mostly in Canada. We have employees in the States, across Europe, Asia, around the world. They’re all subject to different sorts of rules and regulations and support programs that their governments in different countries provide. In Canada, unfortunately we’ve had to lay off a lot of people in our factories. What we did do is set up an employee support fund, and that employee support fund, I’ve contributed my entire base salary to that and the company has contributed a bunch of money to that. To my amazing, and many of our amazing surprises, employees of the company who are still employed and not laid off have started to contribute their own salaries to this fund as well. So it really speaks volumes to communities speaks to the culture of the company.

Dani Reiss:
It’s amazing that our colleagues and people’s colleagues and peers want to support them through these hard times, and we have this fund that we use to support people who aren’t getting the kind of support they need from the government and from government programs, or have extenuating circumstances. That’s where this fund comes in, and it’s been really heartening to see how many of our staff have stepped up and want to contribute to this. It’s totally unexpected. Those are the kind of special things that come out of moments like this in history. I think that it’s those sorts of things that’ll be remembered.

Goldy Hyder:
Gives you hope, doesn’t it?

Dani Reiss:
Absolutely. And hope is a very important thing.

Goldy Hyder:
I think it is. Now, you mentioned being an international company, of course. You’ve got footprint around the world. And in some cases I guess your company would have experienced the virus earlier in this process, perhaps as early as December or January. What can we take away from how other countries have handled the virus and how we’re responding to it, with your experience having seen it in other parts of the world?

Dani Reiss:
For sure we’ve seen China. It’s hard to speculate about the difference between how it did play out there and still is to some extent playing out there and how it’s going to play out here.

Goldy Hyder:
Are they back to work in China?

Dani Reiss:
Most of our stores are open in China right now. I think that China is not normalizing. China’s still recovering. I think that it takes a while to recover from something like this. And hopefully there is no reoccurrence of this virus in China as well. That’s something that people are worried about. In the best case scenario for everybody, if this is the kind of thing that lasts three months and then we can reliably know that it’ll last three months, then we could start to slowly ramp back up and get back to business as usual, that would be great. I think it’s unfortunate that we don’t actually know for a fact it will be like that. I think that that’s probably the consensus of what’s going to happen. But I think also it’s responsible for businesses to plan for worse than that, because you never know. We don’t know what it’s going to be like. That’s what makes this time so unique is that you know don’t know how long it’s going to last.

Goldy Hyder:
Well, look, let me just ask a final question if I can. We’re both pretty proud Canadians, you’ve got a brand that has the word Canada right in there, front and center, Canada Goose. What is your takeaway about we as a people and we as a country and how we are managing this situation?

Dani Reiss:
I think that relative to other countries we’ve done a very good job of managing the situation. I think it’s an impossible situation to begin with. Nobody saw this sort of situation coming. It’s very difficult to prepare for. I think Canadians are a kind people, we’re kind to each other. I think that I see lots of great things happening in Canadian business and a lot of high level leadership. A lot of people stepping up and dedicating their resources genuinely, not because they think it’s going to bring them future benefit, but because they feel this is the right thing to do for the country and for the people who live in the country because they care about that. I think that that is a truly Canadian attitude.

Dani Reiss:
It brings me a lot of hope about how we can come out of this. Because none of us want to be here, but for sure when this ends, and it will, we all want to come out of this as strongly as we possibly can. At the country level, at the business level, at the family level, at every level we want to come out of this as strongly as we possibly can. The more Canadian businesses I see stepping in to be leaders at this I think is great, and certainly it’s really important to me that as a brand that, as you mentioned, does have Canada in its name, and we’ve been ambassadors for Canada around the world, it’s very important that we take a leadership role in doing this as well and set a great example for what great community engagement can look like.

Goldy Hyder:
Dani, that’s a great note to end on. It’s the Canadian thing to do, as you say. Thank you for your leadership and your company’s leadership during this crisis. And as you said, we’re all going to get through this and we’re going to be better at the other end. It’s because of the examples that you and others are setting. Thank you so much for joining us on this edition, my friend.

Dani Reiss:
100%. Thanks, Goldy, always great talking to you. Yeah, I look forward to seeing you in person again as soon as we possibly can.

Goldy Hyder:
You bet. Be well. My guest today has been Dani Reiss, president and CEO of Canada Goose. This is part of a special podcast series we’re doing to discuss the COVID-19 crisis and how business is responding to the challenges we all face together. You can listen to more of our conversations by searching Speaking Of Business wherever you get your podcasts, or simply go to our website, speakingofbiz.ca. That’s biz with a zed. Until next time, I’m Goldy Hyder. Thanks for joining us.