National Post (National Edition)
Meet the PPE problem solver.
MOTHER OF 2 MAKES CANADIAN-MADE PPE MODEL SOAR
David Chilton got a call last March from his friend, Mike Lazaridis, just as Ontario was hurtling towards its first pandemic-related lockdown.
Lazaridis, co-founder of Research In Motion Ltd. and father of the BlackBerry device, understood that his pal knew most everybody in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., entrepreneur universe, and asked for his help in putting together a group of can-do minded individuals to solve a shortfall in personal protective equipment (PPE) among front-line health-care workers and first responders in the region.
Not long after that call, the former Dragons' Den panel member, serial investor and esteemed author of the bestselling Wealthy Barber financial planning books stepped from the office he leases in a co-working space and bumped into Amber French, a 30-something-year-old mother of two with an office across the hall.
The pair had been bumping into one another for the better part of two years. French, once upon an earlier career, worked in medical hardware — artificial hips, knees and the like — before pivoting to private investment and eventually partnering with Kurtis McBride to form Catalyst Capital Inc., an early stage, tech-friendly investment firm.
McBride, the founder of Miovision Technologies Inc., an urban mobility/traffic management company into which Telus Ventures recently invested $120 million, also owns the co-working space in Kitchener where his partner kept bumping into Chilton.
French had read The Wealthy Barber as a teenager. Her adolescent take-away from the book: “Pay yourself first.” But after Chilton mentioned Lazaridis' call to action, she asked how she could help without any expectation of reward. Afterward, she and Chilton became partners in Supply + Protect Inc., a not-for-profit PPE-focused digital venture underwritten by her hallway buddy.
“I am obsessive compulsive about due diligence,” Chilton said. “But when Amber came to me for some funding for startup costs, I didn't do any due diligence, because I trusted her, because I knew she would make it work.”
That faith is because French had done so before in the early days of the pandemic, when she went from bumping into Chilton to spearheading the Lazaridis group's PPE-sourcing efforts.
“She was crazily good at it — she was finding more PPE than anybody else,” Chilton said. “Amber is not afraid to pick up the phone.”
French cold-called manufacturers in China and South Korea, worked contacts from her past career in medical technology, hooked up with Ontario Health and learned some valuable lessons, including that PPE is not all of equal quality and that counterfeiting was rife.
Despite the challenges, within a month she had sourced and helped deliver thousands of medical-grade masks, surgical gowns and gloves to health-care workers in the community.
“I didn't have supply chain or PPE experience — I do now — but what I do have is a large network, and so I just started calling people,” French said.
Those early days were a heady time of spirited collectiveness, highlighting French's problem-solving skills and doggedness, but also a more enduring problem: The pandemic wasn't going away then and it isn't going away now, nor is the ongoing demand for PPE.
Enter Supply + Protect, which functions as an online marketplace where businesses — restaurants, dental practices, retail outlets, office buildings and more — can buy Canadian-made PPE, everything from face shields to protective gowns to hand sanitizer.
To appear on the site, a vendor must provide all the necessary certifications and licensing agreements that authenticate whatever products they are selling.
The hook for buyers is that the goods are verifiably not knock-offs, or otherwise shoddy junk, and they are (mostly) made in Canada. Purchasing items is both a means of keeping workers and workplaces safe, and putting Canadians in the manufacturing sector to work.
“It is a place where Canadians can shop Canadian,” French said.
It is a win-win, as they say, and the numbers seven months post-launch reflect, perhaps, some patriotic fervour, with more than two million surgical gloves, 350,000 medical masks and plenty of wipes, eye protection and air purifiers sold through the site to date.
Part of what makes the undertaking impressive is the juggling act French has performed to pull it off, especially in recent weeks, not to mention last spring, with Ontario lockdown orders keeping her generally locked up at home with her sons, Owen, age eight, and Isaac, six.
During a recent, relatively quiet midday moment, she spoke of the “gong show” of pandemic parenting, and of the internal crisis many parents have confronted since March.
Some days you are rocking it at work and failing as a parent, while it's the reverse on other days. The constant emotional flip-flop guarantees but one thing: nagging guilt is the parent/working stiff's most reliable companion.
“I am a planner, but I can't plan as I normally would, and so you just have to kind of roll with the punches, and with the kids' emotions on a given day,” French said.
On a day in mid-January, French was able to step outside, see the sun, dwell within her thoughts — without distraction — and then start pounding through the work that was piling up.
“Amber is an entrepreneur for all the right reasons,” Chilton said. “She is looking to help others and solve problems. Her enthusiasm is contagious. Really, I should be her agent.”
Indeed. Their offices are right across the hall from one another.