On Friday, October 24, Sandra Wilson, Founder of Robeez and Cathy Priestner Allinger, Olympian Executive VP, VANOC shared their inspirational stories on how they built and realized their dreams and provided sage advice to other moms looking to do the same.

Sandra Wilson, Founder of Robeez
Sandra founded Robeez in 1994, when her son was 18 months old and she wanted to create a home-based business that would provide her family more flexibility and allow her to spend more time with her son Rob. She sewed shoes in her basement and within 12 years, grew it to a multimillion dollar business and then sold it to Stride Rite. Now she gives her time and expertise and mentors three entrepreneurs through the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs of British Columbia (FWE).
Over a period of five years, Sandra built her business to three full-time employees working out of her home and $250,000 in revenue. In 1999, Sandra moved the business out of her home took on a couple partners and grew the business to $5 million in revenue within four years. In the end, when they sold to Stride Rite, Robeez had become a $30 million business. Sandra feels lucky to have had the experience and she found that one key to her success was finding and hiring good people. When Sandra and her partners decided to sell the business, two years ago, it was a tough decision, especially with all of the challenges she went through to build the business – she was now letting it all go.
Some challenges Sandra had while building the Robeez business:
Balancing work and children was one of the largest challenges that Sandra faced during this period. She used part-time daycare and she was lucky that as her business grew, the timing was right with her son going into grade one, and she realized she could now take the business further.
Fitting in fitness - Sandra ran at 6am in the mornings with her girlfriends to fit fitness into her life.
Nurturing relationships - What she realized was that we can’t do everything. When Robeez was growing, Sandra and her husband limited their social calendar. Now Sandra gets to nurture the relationships that got somewhat neglected during the whole growth process.
Money - The lack of money was a challenge. It took Sandra three to five years to start drawing an income from her own business. For a number of years they even had students living with them in their home to help pay the bills.
Advice from Sandra:
Weeding through the advice is important. Her and her team would be told by advisors that if you’re not making $80,000 by this time, you should fold up the business. Sandra says that you need to listen to your instincts. A lot of the advice you receive is good, but you can also receive conflicting advice.
Set goals for your business. She didn’t start with a formal business plan but she was always consistent with was setting goals, especially revenue goals: doubling revenue year upon year.
Financial management is a key factor of success. You need to be focused on the revenue because if your business is not making money, then you have a hobby not a business. Everyday ask yourself, where’s my revenue stream? How am I getting sales in the future?
Persistence is very important. It would have been very easy to throw in the towel several different times. But Sandra knew that she was on the right track and felt that she was doing the right thing. And staying power is important when you don’t have a lot of support.

Cathy Priestner Allinger, Silver Medalist and Olympian Executive VP, VANOC
Cathy Preistly-Allinger is a silver medalist and the first Canadian woman to win a medal in speedskating. She has been a trail blazer in the Olympics, and she has helped get more women in sports and on committees throughout her career. Cathy has been involved in every Winter Olympics since 1972 in various roles including a broadcaster, sport coach, venue manager, and manager of Olympic medal events.
Cathy feels that being a mom is her biggest accomplishment and being a mom and wife is the best part of her life. Her family is committed to athletics and sport and her daughter is a professional volleyball player.
Cathy started skating when she was 11 years old. Her mentor and coach was Ron who could see she was meant to be a skater. At the age of 15, Cathy was already winning medals in meets and she made it to her first Olympic Games where she quickly emerged onto the world scene. Tragically, her coach was killed during this time and she had to find her strength to continue on her own. Cathy’s new coach didn’t believe she would actually win a medal and recommended that she didn’t go to the Olympics. Cathy has a pretty independent spirit and she didn’t like to do what others thought especially if she thought they were wrong. This was also a motivating factor for her because she wanted to prove all the nay-sayers that they were wrong.
Cathy won her silver medal for Canada – in that moment she knew all her sacrifices and commitment was worth it. Perfection had been executed and she wanted to feel that feeling again and again, over and over. She felt proud to have represented Canada and has held onto those feelings with everything that she has done moving forward.
Advice from Cathy:
Never underestimate the potential in others and encourage them to be their best
Cathy approached a speed coach in a new city and asked him if she could help them out. She had an instant connection with this one girl but the coach explained to Cathy that this girl Bonnie was probably going to quit. Cathy met with her one on one and then personally coached her. She became one of the first Americans to earn five Olympic medals. Even though this girl was about to quit, with the right encouragement, she came out on top. Cathy believes we are all leaders and each of us can have so much influence in another person’s life.
Be willing to take chances
To succeed, Cathy really believes that we need to be willing to take chances. At an organization where Cathy worked, they fired the VP of Sport and asked Cathy to fill in. After searching but then not finding what they were looking for elsewhere, they offered Cathy a Director of Sport position. She felt that this position was set up to fail as they hadn’t positioned it properly to lead the team properly. That day she walked out and next day they offered Cathy the VP of Sport position.
Be committed to your priorities
Cathy always ensured that her three kids were her priority and she never apologized for this. Cathy believes that it is important to be there to celebrate the big successes and also work through those challenging times. She admits that through these most intense younger-family times, she had no social life and very few friends. But she feels that these relationship sacrifices were needed at the time and she is now able to build, and rebuild her outside relationships.
Question Period:
Q. Sandra, were you self financed from the beginning/start-up of your business?
A. Yes, she was able to grow the business with the revenue that came in. Sandra did use a line of credit at various times and had leases on various sewing machines, but that was it. They focused on sales routes until they got past the $30 million mark. Then at that time, they needed to go outside for financing. She wanted another partner to grow the business but then ended up selling the business.
Q. How did you keep the faith in your business/sport despite the long haul to success in the first five years?
A. Sandra
Achieving the goals that Sandra set was how she kept on going. Robeez kept receiving phenomenal feedback – she found this encouraging and knew that the product was a winner. She did not receive any negative feedback, and the stores continued to sell more and more of the shoes. How did I manage to build the business? Sandra learned and struggled as she went along.
A. Cathy:
Cathy’s first marriage wasn’t working and her mom was an alcoholic. But then Cathy woke up one morning and said “it’s over” and changed her life because she knew it wasn’t healthy. She decided that she didn’t want to do this anymore. She wanted to coach and do something different. And thinking this way is what makes others believe in themselves too. Cathy’s daughter is now going to the Olympics as she’s passed along to her kids that anything is possible.

Q. Sandra, how involved in the business was your husband?
A. Her husband was very involved and supported Sandra. They went together to the Vancouver Show and received orders that totaled 250 pairs of shoes. But then they wondered, “How are we going to make all these shoes?” She remembers that she bought the leather from a store on Cambie and they spent the entire weekend hand cutting all of the shoes, using cardboard patterns and a knife. Her husband worked with BC Tourism and traveled a lot, but with a background in marketing he was her cheerleader and was a great sounding board.
Q. Sandra, I’m in a similar beginning spot with my business. I’m doing a lot of detail work and hand work, so it takes a lot of time. I’m at a hard point in my business in that if I get help I have to pay them but I don’t make enough money to pay them to also do it by hand. How did you get your business to the next step?
A. Sandra looked around at other leather products on the market and tried to figure out how they made their products. She knew she had to learn about manufacturing. While they started making the shoes by hand they had to move production to the next level where it was all electronically sewn and automated. They bought machinery that her company re-gigged to produce Robeez shoes to their specs and patterns. As Robeez evolved, the designs became more detailed and the shoes were better made because of this automated process.
The key is asking lots of questions and talking to people to learn better ways to do things. If you are not making a good margin on the product, then ask yourself how could you do it better – bring costs down or even look at a different product. Making a profit is key – otherwise what you have is only a hobby.
Q. Sandra, as you grew your business how did you protect it (trademarks, copywriting etc.)? As Robeez grew larger, I know you must have ended up with so many knock off products vying for market share. How were you able to protect your brand?
A. This really did become a challenge. This is one of the reasons that Sandra’s team sold the business – Robeez was getting hammered by knock-offs. Robeez created a category vs. just a new product. Really big companies were jumping into the market with the same type of product. The only way to protect your business is to protect the name brand on the product. Robeez never took legal action, they just wrote very strong letters to instigate other companies to back off. You can’t protect the design, only the name.
Q. Cathy, how do you balance the world of competitive sports and learning hockey etc. but also to just get out and play? Have fun for the sake of fun, health and exercise?
A. Every child has a need to play. And now there are so many role models for sport. When children see high performance sport they are inspired. The key is to have someone watch and help guide the child into which sports are very good for them (natural abilities and physical advantages). Direct them to help ensure that they have the physical ability. And if the children want to compete, allow them every opportunity to do this.
Q. Sandra, how do you feel about Robeez going off-shore and having the shoes manufactured in Asia?
A. Selling the company was a huge emotional moment for Sandra. It was very tough for the two months after the business was sold. She went through a grieving process, really like someone had died. When you sell a company you don’t have control anymore. Sandra feels that this move of manufacturing is unfortunate and it will be interesting to see what happens over the next two years.