National recognition for Neepawa business woman

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Published on Thursday, October 13, 2016

Photos by Tony Eu. Representatives from the Neepawa RBC branch gave Michelle Gerrard a bouquet of flowers to celebrate her being chosen as a finalist for the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards. Left to right: Shelby Howard (RBC financial advisor), Kerri MacPherson (RBC branch manager), Michelle Gerrard (owner of Neepawa Home Hardware Building Centre) and Scott Dyke (RBC financial planner).

By Tony Eu

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

Michelle Gerrard of Neepawa is receiving national attention for her business acumen. As of Oct. 4, Gerrard, the owner of Neepawa’s Home Hardware, is a finalist in the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneurship Awards. Presented by Women of Influence, the awards are designed to celebrate the achievements of some of the most successful female Canadian entrepreneurs. The award program has been running for 24 years, acknowledging over 135 Canadian women. 

This year, there are six categories: ADP Micro-Business, Deloitte Start-Up, RBC Momentum, Social Change, TELUS Trailblazer and PROFIT. Three Canadian women were picked for each category, one from western Canada, one from central Canada and one from eastern Canada. Five thousand women were nominated for this year’s awards.

Gerrard was selected as one of the finalists for the PROFIT category. “Through timely innovation, strategic thinking and smart execution, the recipient of this award has built and managed one or more successful businesses over a period of 10 years. With a proven track record of growth, profitability, and industry leadership, this entrepreneur’s exploits have generated an uncommon degree of economic growth, and she has shown to possess the drive, managerial acumen and leadership traits that others aspire to have,” the explanation for the PROFIT award reads.

The winners will be announced at the Awards Gala on Nov. 16, which is taking place in the Fairmount Royal York in Toronto. She will be attending the gala along with her family.

Nontraditional roles

“Somebody nominated me for the award and then [the organizers] sent me an application that I had to complete,” Gerrard said. “Basically, I had to tell them about my business, about what my business life had been, obstacles I’ve had to overcome, how my business has grown and changed since I’ve had it and what my plans for the future are for my business,” she said about the application process.

“It recognizes women who are majority shareholders in their businesses and who have built businesses and overcome obstacles,” explained Gerrard, referring to the awards in general. “Mine is sort of a nontraditional role for a woman, being in a hardware store/lumber yard. They like to recognize woman who have taken those uncommon or nontraditional roles and have been able to build them into successful businesses,” she added.

“When I go to trade shows or meetings, 95 per cent of the time I’m the only woman in the room,” she remarked, showing just how unusual it is for a woman to be in her line of business. 

Gerrard believes that one of the main reasons she was picked as a finalist is because of her nontraditional position. “It’s those types of roles where they like to take women who’ve been successful and recognize them, so if there’s any girls or women that want to be in those nontraditional [jobs] it gives them someone to look up to, a role model and to show them that you can be successful,” she noted, adding, “I think what they’re trying to recognize and trying to show to other people, is that you can overcome the obstacles I’ve had to overcome to build a successful business.”

Overcoming obstacles

Every entrepreneur has to face obstacles, however, Gerrard has had to face more than most of her peers and most of the time, it’s because of her gender. One of the first challenges she had to face was unrelated to being a woman in business, but it was one that many wouldn’t have been able to overcome. Six months after buying her business, Gerrard was diagnosed with cancer.

“Obviously, I couldn’t stay at home, we had just bought the business and I had to be here after surgeries, through treatments, no hair, everything like that,” she recounted. “I didn’t have walls around an office; we had just a small business at that point so I had to be out there. It was very difficult to face customers one on one while I was going through that.”

Gerrard beat her battle with cancer, but her battle to establish herself as a female in the hardware and lumber business was only just getting started. “I think any woman in a business faces challenges,” Gerrard notes. “We are, lots of times, taught and raised differently than boys, we just are sometimes. So women in business sometimes face that hurdle that we’re not good enough, or we don’t have a voice or we don’t deserve to actually be in business and be able to be leaders and employers. We have to face that challenge within ourselves,” she remarked.

“[In the hardware and lumber business] there can be a lot of egos and men that I have to deal with, that don’t think I have any business being in the business,” Gerrard shared about the challenges she faces in her field. “[They] don’t take my opinions seriously, [they] don’t take my ideas seriously and [they] don’t give me the credit that I deserve, being in the business,” she explained.

She went on to note that she’s never encountered anything terrible, at least, nothing that she couldn’t handle. She also mentioned that most of the time, it’s not outright sexism, but “more by omission.”

“It’s changing. I’m going to say probably in the next generation it’s going to be much better than it is in my generation and older, but you’ll still face a little bit of backlash from it,” Gerrard said, optimistic for the future of women in business.

“I’m not complaining. It’s nothing insurmountable that any other women in any other position, whether they’re business owners or not [hasn’t had] to face,” she mentioned. “It’s [just] a little harder getting credibility in the business,” she added.

Despite the challenges Gerrard has faced and continues to face, her business isn’t suffering for it. In fact, she has a number of plans in the works to expand and diversify the business.

As far as diversifying, Gerrard has just entered the real estate scene. “What some partners and myself have done, is we’ve started building the senior’s residence that’s going on First Ave. and Mill St.,” she explained. “We’re working on another senior’s residence for the spring to build, because we recognize that there’s a need for safe, affordable senior’s housing in Neepawa… There’s been a lot of talk about building in town and nobody has been. So, we recognized an opportunity to build them and we are. Troy [Mutch] and myself recognized that we needed to get that done and there was an opportunity to do it,” she elaborated.

“I want to diversify and sort of branch out from just being a hardware store, to help meet some of those needs of the community,” Gerrard remarked. She also talked about possibly moving to a new location, as they’ve outgrown their current location.

Michelle Gerrard, owner of the Neepawa Home Hardware Building Centre, in front of her store. Gerrard was nominated for and is now a finalist in the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards.

“If we’re going to expand and grow more, we need to have more room,” Gerrard said. She mentioned as well that there were a number of other projects that she’s working on, however, she isn’t able to talk about them quite yet.

As a final thought on being chosen as a finalist for the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneurship Awards, Gerrard said, “I’m really very flattered that somebody would think I’m worthy of the recognition. I really don’t know what the deciding factor was… but I’m very flattered.”