Edit No. 23: Turning Canada into a global consumer brand powerhouse

It’s always such a nice feeling to put out content that is well received. In case you missed it, I published the latest version of my Canadian Digital Commerce Ecosystem Map a few weeks ago. To everyone that provided feedback, thanks so much! I’ll be sure to include the company names I missed in an updated version. And I’m excited to add all the new subcategories that were suggested for next time (many of which were already on the roadmap 😉).

I had published the map as part of a keynote and panel discussion I did at the Elevate Festival in Toronto. It was the perfect forum because the purpose of my session was to highlight how Canada has the potential to become a global consumer brand powerhouse.

Here’s a video of my keynote, which was followed by a panel discussion with two iconic Canadian brand builders — Dexter Peart of Goodee and Jenny Bird of her eponymous jewelry brand:

As we discuss in the video, Canada has given the world some of the most iconic consumer brand companies. I’m thinking of incredible lifestyle brands such as Lululemon, which is adored the world over. You also have tech-forward retailers such as SSENSE, which has convinced Gen Z and millennials to spend upwards of a $1,000 on sweatpants without ever trying them on!

My ecosystem map demonstrates that we’re not just producing incredible consumer brands. We’re also building world-class enabling technologies that power them and allow them to succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace. I’m talking about the likes of Shopify and Lightspeed for example — two e-commerce software companies which influence millions of purchase transactions globally every single day.

But… with all this incredible momentum, you’d think it would be easy to launch new brands here in Canada. Well, it isn’t always unfortunately. And that’s because we continue to underinvest in the ecosystem — particularly on the consumer brand side of things.

Some of the challenges that Canadian consumer brand startups face include:

• Lack of clustering, organized community building, and support groups
• Limited pathways to national and global mentorship for founders
• Approximately 62% less startup capital deployed per capita vs. the U.S.
• Approximately 36% lower average deal sizes for startups vs. the U.S.
• Fewer relevant venture capital funds, corporate funds, and consumer brand focused accelerators / incubators

The purpose of my session at Elevate was to invite two successful Canadian brand builders to help answer the following questions:

• What if we invested in — and celebrated — our collective potential for building enduring brands?
• How do we internalize a global mindset and instil that in our founders?
• How do we build the community to sustain and accelerate the existing momentum?
• What does the supporting ecosystem need to look like (i.e. funding, policies, programs, etc.)?

I want to thank Jenny and Dexter for their incredible insights. They emphasized points such as the need to build community, accelerate funding for founders, and have a bias towards original thinking. My hope in sharing this video is that you can internalize their feedback to help sustain the momentum behind Canada’s brand building community.

As if the Elevate programming wasn’t keeping me busy enough, I also had the opportunity to speak with Murad Hemmadi at The Logic about the ecosystem map. My commentary in this article touches on a lot of the same things that I talked about during the Elevate session.

“There just needs to be more momentum behind this, so that we can get more Shopifys, more Ssenses.” https://t.co/AjAVRvPhug

— The Logic (@the_logic) September 22, 2022

The article is paywalled but linking to it above for those that subscribe to The Logic.

Thanks again to everyone for helping me get through the last few busy — but rewarding — weeks! Now back to producing more great content for you all. Stay tuned… lots of exciting things in the works.