Dawn Calleja, editor of Report on Business magazine.Daniel Ehrenworth/The Globe and Mail
In the 15-plus years I’ve been a mom, there’s no place I’ve spent more time in (or possibly more money at) than Dollarama DOL-T. To my children, particularly when they were younger, our local outlet—and not, in fact, Disney World—was the most magical place on Earth, filled with art supplies and duct tape and tiny wooden boxes, plastic fidget spinners, Pokémon merch and gazillions of other products they begged me to buy on every trip. For the record, I did once take them to Disney, and I remain convinced that had I simply slipped them each 20 bucks and set them loose at Dollarama, they’d have had a better time.
Over the past 30 years, the chain has become an indelible part of Canadian life. As Nicolas Van Praet notes in his cover story—naming Dollarama’s Neil Rossy our CEO of the Year—70% of Canadians visit a Dollarama store at least once a month, and 29% visit at least once a week. And its business model seems to defy wider economic cycles. “It does well when people are pinched for money,” Van Praet says, “and it does well when they aren’t.”
The Rossys know retail. Neil’s great-grandfather fled Turkish-occupied Lebanon in the early 1900s and settled in Montreal, peddling brooms and other everyday items before opening his first general store in 1910. More than 80 years later, Neil’s dad, Larry—in charge of the family business since 1973—opened a 2,000-square-foot dollar store in a village in the Gaspé as a bit of an experiment. Needless to say, it was a hit. As senior editor John Daly wrote in another Dollarama cover story back in 2012: “Ever since that first store was opened...the goal has been to keep the focus as narrow as possible—operate clean, well-lit stores with a consistent inventory, hold prices at rock bottom and keep the family in charge.”
Neil succeeded his father as CEO in 2016, and he has largely stuck to that blueprint. Since his ascension, sales have doubled, and the number of stores has increased by more than 50%. But while those green-and-yellow signs are now ubiquitous, Rossy himself is not. In fact, this profile marks his first major interview ever. Eschewing the spotlight runs in the family: Back in 2012, Larry only reluctantly agreed to talk and refused to be photographed for the cover.
Daniel Ehrenworth, who shot all five CEO of the Year honourees, admits he was a bit trepidatious when he learned of Rossy fils’s media shyness, and he offers up a hilarious analogy on how drastically he changed his mind. “When I first heard about carrot cake as a kid, the distance between how I thought it would taste and how it actually tasted was bigger than for any other cake around,” says Daniel. So it went with Rossy. Daniel was bracing for a subject who was stiff and reluctant to take direction; instead, he found a man who was warm, relaxed, enthusiastic and engaging. “Just like with carrot cake, I walked in thinking I was going to hate this,” says Daniel, “and I walked out of there with my favourite CEO experience.”
You can read all five of this year’s CEO of the Year profiles. We hope you enjoy each one of them as much as Daniel and I both enjoy a fine piece of carrot cake.
Each year, ROB lauds the top innovator, strategist, global visionary, corporate citizen and newcomer. Meet the latest crop, including a potato magnate building the farm of the future, a retail savant and a space maven setting course for a top spot in the new space race.
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