Profit magazine's top woman entrepreneur passes $1.5B in sales

Canada's top female entrepreneur posted revenue approaching $2 billion in fiscal 2008, a sign of how far Canadian women risk-takers have come since 1999, according to Profit magazine.

Profit, which has been tracking women in business since 1999, said Tuesday that Rebecca MacDonald, who heads up the Energy Savings Income Fund, is the country's top female entrepreneur in 2008.

Her company, which offers consumers fixed-rate energy contracts, had revenue of $1.73 billion for its fiscal 2008, which ended March 31, 2008. That was an increase of $1.53 billion over the same period in 2007 and a huge jump compared to $23 million in sales in 1999, the year Profit began following women entrepreneurs in Canada.

One clear trend in the past ten years is that the increase in women setting up their own businesses mirrored — although at a shallower angle — Energy Savings' revenue jump.

Since 1981, the number of women who own their own firms rose by 234 per cent, reaching 683,000 in 2006, according to Statistics Canada.

Since 1981, the number of women who own their own firms rose by 234 per cent, reaching 683,000 in 2006, according to Statistics Canada. If you count from 2001, that growth is more modest, at 8.4 per cent ,but is still two percentage points higher than the male rate of 6.5 per cent.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce estimated the number of women business owners currently as exceeding 800,000.

Still, female-run firms tend to be small, with 85 per cent having fewer than five employees. In addition, they post an average annual revenue of $318,000, less than half of the $680,000 that male small businesses generate.

Some experts noted that women have an affinity for setting up companies in the less labour-intensive and sometimes slower-growth service sector.

By any measure, however, women are doing much better in the business world than they were years ago, according to the federal government.

"As the number of self-employed women in Canada approaches one million by the end of the decade, women entrepreneurs are well-positioned to play a more important role in the economy," the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce said in a 2005 report on female entrepreneurs.

Here are the top five Canada female entrepreneurs, according to Profit magazine:

Rebecca MacDonald

MacDonald, executive chair of Energy Savings Income Fund, whose company grew in the aftermath of Ontario's deregulation of the energy sector. Her firm sells long-term energy contracts to customers at cheaper rates than those offered by Ontario's utilities.

Even with the market turmoil, MacDonald still sees a bright future in the sector.

"We are in a growth industry and while we are not immune to general economic woes, we can continue to grow and do so profitably," she said in August.

Gabrielle Chevalier

Chevalier, president and chief operating officer of Solutions 2 Go Inc., has helped build the Mississauga, Ont., video game distributor into a $500 million enterprise.

By flogging games such as Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Simpsons video games to the likes of HMV, Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, Solutions 2 Go has grown from $37 million in revenue in 2004 to sales of $453 million by 2008.

Madeleine Paquin

Paquin, president and chief executive officer of Logistec Corp., has survived as head of one of the country's largest logistics firms in Canada's hardscrabble marine sector.

The Montreal-based company has facilities dotting the eastern coast of Canada and the United States and excels at getting products on and off ships. What was a $100 million operation when Paquin took over in 1996 churned out $210 million in sales with a profit of $11 million in 2007.

Janis Grantham

Grantham, president and chief operating officer of Eagle Professional Resources, is a regular on Profit's top female entrepreneur list and on lists of the country's most powerful women. The company, which she co-owns with her husband, provides temporary workers to the always-in-need information technology sector.

The Ottawa-based firm had more than $88 million in sales in its latest fiscal year.

Robin Todd

Todd, president and CEO of Marks Supply Inc., is proving that the world of towel warmers, submersible pumps and plastic laundry tubs might be a better bet for business success than delving into asset-backed commercial paper and other exotic financial instruments.

Her Kitchener-based plumping supply company posted $61 million in sales is in a sector that will keep growing, at an expected rate of 2.6 per cent a year to 2011 in the United States alone.

After all, there are other things that are as inevitable in life as death and taxes.

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