Each year, Caldwell Partners International chooses 40 Canadians who were under 40 in the past year to honour for their outstanding achievements. Click here to learn more about the program, and find more winners in the list below.
At 19, Calvin McDonald knew exactly what he wanted to be: a homicide detective. But when he applied for work with the RCMP and the Ontario Provincial Police, both organizations turned him away.
“They said, ‘You’ve always lived at home, so you have to show us you can function on your own,’” recalls Mr. McDonald, who lives in Toronto with his wife and four young children. “At the time, I was working at Loblaws as a grocery clerk, so I applied for a job at head office with the intention of applying again to the [police] forces in a year.”
Mr. McDonald, who has a degree in biology from the University of Western Ontario in London and an MBA from the University of Toronto, never reapplied to the police forces. Instead, he says, he fell in love with retail and his employer, Toronto-based Loblaw Companies Limited, which owns Loblaws and No Frills grocery stores across the country.
He became Loblaw’s executive vice-president in charge of marketing, customer relationship management, Loblaw brands and corporate strategy – a job that put him in charge of more than 400 people and a budget of about $200-million.
A continuing challenge for Mr. McDonald is how to keep up with changing consumer tastes and keep competitors at bay.
His achievements including building an online business for Loblaw’s in-house President’s Choice brand, which he used as the platform for the Insider’s Club, a direct marketing program where customers sign up to get savings coupons and information about store offers and promotions.
In 2005, he introduced PC – short for President’s Choice – mobile phones and telephone cards, which today bring in about $10-million in earnings per year.
And those ice-cream aisles, which last year were dressed up to resemble old-fashioned parlours? They were Mr. McDonald’s brainchild, and they led to a significant growth in Loblaw’s share of the ice-cream market.
Mr. McDonald has also led the development of PC TV, a reality show where Canadians submit recipes in hopes of getting them made into a President’s Choice product. The show airs this fall on the Food Network and local Global television stations.
“I'm a little competitive by nature,” says Mr. McDonald, a marathon runner, cyclist and triathlon athlete. “I love matching creativity with problem-solving to come up with interesting solutions.”
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