EY's Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ program helps women-owned businesses scale

Three Canadians secure spots in 2014 program

TORONTO, Nov. 13, 2014 /CNW/ - Women-owned businesses rarely reach the same level of economic scale as businesses started by men. But EY is working to close that gap with its Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ program, by helping women-owned businesses get access to the necessary knowhow, networks and tools to effectively grow their companies.

Today, at the EY Strategic Growth Forum® in Palm Springs, EY announced Canadians Kathy Cheng, Redwood Classics Apparel, Tonia Jahshan, Steeped Tea, Inc. and Kristen Wood, The Ten Spot, Inc. as part of its 2014 class of Entrepreneurial Winning Women.

"These three Canadian women are trailblazers," says Carrie Marchitto, EY's Entrepreneurial Winning Women leader in Canada. "But they know they face an uphill battle, compared to their male counterparts, when it comes to scale. EY's Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ program helps women tackle challenges head on, and take their businesses to an entirely new level of growth and expansion."

Through the program's guidance and support, participants receive the tangible tools needed to help their businesses grow – whether it's access to outside capital, the right networks, assistance in creating processes or media visibility. In fact, participant companies' total 2013 revenue was 63 percent higher than their total revenues in the years before they joined the program.

"My most profound wake-up call as an entrepreneur happened to me at the EY Strategic Growth Forum^® in Palm Springs," says Canadian Entrepreneurial Winning Women Class of 2013 participant Corin Mullins, founder and CEO of Holy Crap Cereal. "I was being interviewed by a reporter, and I realized for the first time that I really knew my business inside and out. I came away from that amazing event stronger, more confident and with a clearer business vision, ultimately inspired by EY's mentorship. My sales have already increased 50% with the changes I made from knowledge gained from my EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women peers,"

In September, EY issued an independent report, Force Multipliers: How three fundamental adaptations can help women entrepreneurs scale big, in conjunction with Babson College's Center for Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership, which surveyed the program's participants. The research identified three steps that female entrepreneurs can take to significantly accelerate their company's growth: define a purpose; build a community of peers; and adapt their leadership style.

"This year's winners come from a broad range of industries and geographies," says Marchitto. "The common denominator, however, is that they are all poised to reach new levels of growth, following in the footsteps of past winners. We're so excited to have three exceptional Canadian women forging ahead and defying all odds on their paths to success."

The 2014 winners are:

Canada:

Kathy Cheng
Redwood Classics Apparel                 
Toronto, Ontario
Redwood Classics Apparel is one of North America's few vertically integrated apparel manufacturers, proudly producing on Canadian soil. They help premium retail and designer brands by focusing on quality, low minimums, speed to market, flexibility and a collaborative approach to product development and bulk production. By considering each client a business partner, clients are freed to focus on their core competencies, while Redwood Classics helps them execute efficiently and effectively.

Tonia Jahshan
Steeped Tea, Inc.                   
Ancaster, Ontario
Tea is poised to overtake the coffee market by 2020. Taking advantage of this trend, Steeped Tea has driven 3,000% revenue growth in the last two years by direct selling loose-leaf tea at in-home parties. Through the company's 5,000 North American consultants, they're creating entrepreneurs every single day.

Kristen Wood
The Ten Spot, Inc.                  
Toronto, Ontario
The Ten Spot is a quickly-growing chain of upscale beauty spas, offering impeccably executed manicures, pedicures and waxing services in an ultra-clean and hip environment.
The spa industry is a $14 billion market, and The Ten Spot has perfected the first turn-key franchise model that allows franchisees to easily open, successfully operate and readily grow their locations. The company's goal is to be known as the most reputable and recognized beauty bar in the world — in other words, they want to be the Starbucks of spas.

US:

Britnie Faith Turner
Aerial Development Group             
Nashville, TN
Aerial Development Group is Nashville's largest infill residential real estate development company.  Aerial buys up transitional areas of the urban core, revitalizes them and makes them the fastest-appreciating areas of town. The company has grown to $30 million in revenue with $90 million in assets in its first five years. Aerial has expanded into three other cities and has global ambitions. Britnie bought her first rental property at the age of 18 after a trip to Africa, where she was moved to make a real difference; real estate development is her means to do that.

Beth Chase
c3/consulting  
Nashville, TN
c3/consulting is a management consulting firm working with Fortune 1000 and growth companies to successfully navigate critical inflection points, like mergers and acquisitions, strategy shifts, emerging competitive or market pressures, significant regulation changes, and scaling infrastructure for growth. The company works as an extension of private equity firms and the C-suite to ensure important change happens. Their secret sauce is very different from traditional consulting firms: c3 acts as a catalyst to drive transformational change, bringing a unique, roll-up-your-sleeves, people-centric approach to align teams and accelerate execution. They have a 90%+ client retention rate and have doubled their revenue over the past three years.

Robin Ferracone
Farient Advisors, LLC             
Pasadena, Calif.
Farient Advisors is an executive compensation and performance consulting and data company. They are retained primarily by Fortune 500 compensation committees and senior management to design executive pay programs that support the strategy and performance of the business while providing reasonable compensation for the performance delivered. Additionally, they capture, publish and sell compensation data subscriptions around pay and performance alignment. Farient gets to know their clients extraordinarily well, establishing trust and delivering advice supported by strong analytics. They enjoy a retention rate of close to 100%.

Elena Bajic
Ivy Exec, Inc.              
New York
Ivy Exec is a highly selective and curated career community that offers career advancement resources to global business leaders, as well as recruitment, employment branding and market research to leading universities and companies across industries. Although the company accepts only 40% of their applicants, membership has grown to half a million high-caliber professionals. Ivy Exec leverages their technology platform and curated community to offer innovative recruitment solutions to clients such as Google, eBay and The Economist, as well as members of the Fortune 1000 and rapidly growing entrepreneurial companies. Their recruitment services typically reduce the cost per hire by over 30%, in addition to shortening the time to hire.

Amy Norman and Stella Ma
Little Passports                       
San Francisco, Calif.
Little Passports inspires children to learn about the world through monthly subscription-based products. Each month, children receive a package in their mailbox from Little Passports characters Sam and Sofia. With the World Edition, children learn about a new country each month. With the USA Edition, they learn about two new states each month. Every package arrives filled with activities, stickers, souvenirs, photos and access to online games and activities. All content is unique, high-quality and created in-house, resulting in customer retention that is 4 to 6 times the industry average and tripling revenue year-over-year. Little Passports has partnered with companies such as Facebook and the National Geographic Society as they seek to build the next major global multimedia children's brand.

Christine Lantinen
Maud Borup, Inc.                    
Minneapolis
Maud Borup is a wholesale food gift manufacturer specializing in gourmet candy, snacks and beverage for specialty and mass retailers like Target and Walmart. They provide a high level of customer service to retailers and wholesalers through custom product design and development, a lean supply chain and green manufacturing practices. In 2014 alone, Maud Borup produced 3 million gift sets and brought 150 new items to market. The company takes pride in packing its gifts in the US and sourcing a majority of its food and packaging components in the US. Maud Borup's factory is located in LeCenter, MN, where they additionally provide contract packing and are GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) certified. 

Sabina Teshler
SET Creative               
Portland, Ore.
SET Creative is an experiential agency. They specialize in creating engaging experiences at retail and live events that connect consumers to brands — experiences that result in sales, social media sharing and building brand equity. SET works with world-class brands such as Nike, Google, Victoria's Secret and BMW. They are passionate about creating meaningful, best-in-class experiences, holistically incorporating the digital and social components that are present in our everyday lives. Most important, these immersive experiences make consumers lifelong fans of the brand.

Lisa Hufford    
Simplicity Consulting, Inc.      
Kirkland, Wash.
Companies today must stay relevant and go to market faster in an ever-changing and increasingly competitive business environment. Simplicity Consulting has the solution. They deliver scalable, integrated, custom marketing talent solutions to Fortune 1000 companies in the technology, retail, health care, financial services and wireless industries. Simplicity's teams are powered by experts in social media, digital PR, content marketing, campaign management, data analytics and sales enablement. The company has successfully completed thousands of projects with Microsoft, T-Mobile, Amazon, HP, Ericsson, Russell Investments and others, resulting in powerful brand experiences with their customers.

Sarah Kauss
S'well Bottle               
New York
Sarah Kauss designed and developed the first "hydration accessory" bottle, which keeps drinks cold for 24 hours and hot for 12. S'well bottles are sold in 35 countries and thousands of stores, including J. Crew and Nordstrom, and to direct customers such as Facebook, Microsoft and the TED Conference. S'well is the only bottle that looks great and does good, with donations made to charity partners for every bottle sold.

About EY's Entrepreneurial Winning Women program
EY's Entrepreneurial Winning Women is an executive leadership program that identifies a select group of high-potential women entrepreneurs from the United States and Canada whose businesses show real potential to scale — and then helps them do it. Specifically, the program helps bridge the gap for what EY refers to as 'the missing middle' — second-stage women business owners whose companies have emerged from the start-up phase but face a crucial inflection point in their growth journey. Since inception in 2008, the program has helped more than 60 participants grow their companies, averaging approximately 20 percent revenue growth annually. In a company's second year of participation, when they really internalize the information and best practices, these companies have seen revenue growth of up to 50 percent.

The distinguished 2014 panel of independent judges for the Entrepreneurial Winning Women program included:

• Cynthia Cohen, CEO, Strategic Mindshare
• Mike Cohen, Managing General Partner, VGPartners
• Laurie Cunnington, President, Cunnington & Cunnington (formerly President of Ward Williston Oil Company)
• Joy Taylor, Co-Founder and CEO, TayganPoint Consulting

The Entrepreneurial Winning Women program is conducted in collaboration with several organizations that encourage the development of women-owned businesses, including the Women Presidents' Organization (WPO), the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), The Committee of 200 (C200), Golden Seeds, the Kauffman Foundation, Babson College's Center for Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership and the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

For more information, please visit ey.com/ca/EntrepreneurialWinningWomen.

The 13 members of the Entrepreneurial Winning Women Class of 2014 received an all-expense paid trip to this year's EY Strategic Growth Forum^® 2014, an invitation-only gathering of more than 2,000 high-growth, market-leading company CEOs being held this week in Palm Springs, California. The Forum presents a one-of-a-kind platform for Entrepreneurial Winning Women to introduce their companies and share their corporate and personal brands with a community of EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ winners, top executives, prospective investors and business advisors. All 2014 Entrepreneurial Winning Women were introduced and honored at a special celebratory luncheon today during the Forum.

About EY's Strategic Growth Markets Network
EY's worldwide Strategic Growth Markets Network is dedicated to serving the changing needs of high-growth companies. For more than 30 years, we've helped many of the world's most dynamic and ambitious companies grow into market leaders. Whether working with international mid-cap companies or early-stage venture-backed businesses, our professionals draw upon their extensive experience, insight and global resources to help your business succeed.

For more information, please visit ey.com/ca/Entrepreneurs.

EY was recently named 2014 Professional Services Organization of the Year for Advancing Entrepreneurship by Startup Canada. The Startup Canada Awards celebrate and distinguish the individuals, communities and institutions in Canada that have demonstrated innovation, excellence, outstanding achievement and impact in advancing Canadian entrepreneurship.

About EY
EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. For 150 years in Canada, we've delivered the insights and quality services that help build trust and confidence in capital markets here and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities.

EY is proudly celebrating 150 years in Canada. For more information, please visit ey.com/ca. Follow us on Twitter @EYCanada #WinningWomen

EY refers to the global organization and may refer to one or more of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com.

SOURCE: EY (Ernst & Young)

Erika Bennett, [email protected], 403 206 5157; Wendy Tsau, [email protected], 416 941 7792; Julie Fournier, [email protected], 514 874 4308