Janet Campbell, owner of Mrs. McGarrigle’s Fine Food Shop, is a new member of WEConnect .
The taste of success for an Ottawa-area food retailer has been sweeter since joining WEConnect Canada, a new networking group that certifies women-owned and controlled businesses – the first of its kind in Canada.
“It’s really exciting – you have to keep a pen by your bed because at three o’clock in the morning when you get an idea, you have to write it down so you can fall back to sleep,” says Janet Campbell, owner of Mrs. McGarrigle’s Fine Food Shop.
Campbell started her business 20 years ago out of her kitchen, stirring her specialty mustards as her children napped.
Mrs. McGarrigle’s now has a retail store of 3,000 square feet, a staff of 15, 24 products, and several retail and product awards.
But she won’t stop there. Campbell says joining WEConnect is an opportunity to expand further.
“Women are really good communicators and I think that’s where this kind of networking opportunity really allows that to shine,” she says.
Campbell recently joined WEConnect and finished the paperwork confirming her business is at least 51 per cent women-owned and controlled. WEConnect added her business to a list of other certified women-owned businesses. This will make her business available to member corporations such as IBM and Wal-Mart, who are looking for diverse suppliers and pay a subscription fee to access the list.
Since meeting some of the founders of WEConnect in January, Campbell has been to two major conferences and started new ventures to expand her company,: exporting her products wholesale in the U.S. and designing a private label with a big chain in the United Kingdom.
WEConnect Canada will join WEConnect organizations in India and China under WEConnect International, which will be launched in 2010.
Elizabeth Vazquez, executive director of WEConnect International, says businesses like Campbell’s are exactly the type that would benefit from their non-profit group.
She says even though these small and medium-sized businesses offer quality products at competitive prices, they’re often out of the loop.
“A lot of these businesses don’t have the network, the connections, or the information about how large buyers purchase,” Vasquez says.
“And the result is that everyone suffers because right now these large buyers don’t know where to find them.”
Business experts like Barbara Orser, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, say the development of a national database like the one WEConnect is creating is a necessary step in growing Canadian women-owned businesses – a step she says has the potential to lead Canada out of recession.
Orser says at least half of all business ventures in Canada are started by women, but statistics show they are less likely to grow.
“If we work with high potential women-owned businesses and encourage their growth, we have an existing group of businesses to help with economic prosperity,” says Orser.
Orser says the Conservative government isn’t doing enough to support women in business. She says delegating the issue to Status of Women Canada stigmatizes it.
“This is not a “women’s issue.” It’s a Canadian issue,” says Orser. “It’s an economic development issue.”
Orser says Canada lags behind its other economic partners when it comes to encouraging women-owned firms. The U.S. government has a designated goal that five per cent of government contracts should be supplied by women-owned businesses, and the UK government supplied $800,000 to their WEConnect program last year.