In this compelling episode of The Voice of Retail, I sit down again and catch up with Emma May, Founder of SophieGrace, a Calgary-based fashion brand transforming professional womenswear with modular, machine-washable designs. With a diverse background spanning law, politics, and real estate, Emma shares the origin story of SophieGrace, born from her frustration with the lack of cohesive, high-quality wardrobe options for professional women.

Emma discusses how her brand serves an underserved segment—professional women who want elegant, coordinated, and comfortable clothing without the hassle of traditional shopping. She highlights how SophieGrace's clean design ethos and product quality have created an extremely loyal customer base across North America, including legal professionals, political leaders, and C-suite executives.

We dive into the business model, including the online-first strategy supported by two physical showrooms in Calgary and Vancouver and Emma's growing interest in experiential retail through pop-ups and client-hosted events. She details how organic, word-of-mouth growth—amplified by strategic community events like wine-and-shop nights hosted by senior partners and wealth managers—has been central to building the brand's reputation.

Emma also opens up about the operational and strategic challenges of manufacturing. Originally sourcing from China for scalability, SophieGrace explored Canadian production, only to be forced to return offshore after losing a key domestic supplier. Despite these hurdles, product quality and innovation remain front and center—stretch silk blouses and capsule drops ensure her customers return again and again.

The conversation turns to current trade policy headwinds. With 30% of sales once coming from the U.S., Emma unpacks how the elimination of de minimis exemptions and looming tariffs—potentially exceeding 100%—have derailed her expansion plans. The result: a pivot back to Canadian growth and exploring new frontiers, including potential wholesale opportunities and a European launch.

Emma's journey is a masterclass in entrepreneurial grit, customer-driven design, and navigating global trade complexity with agility. Whether you're a fashion entrepreneur, policy wonk, or retail strategist, this episode delivers a wealth of insights into building a brand with purpose and scalability in 2025's challenging retail environment.

Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.

Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.

Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.

Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.

On this encore episode, I sit down with a colleague from back in my work on the brand side, Craig Baxter, Group President of Techtronic Industries Canada Inc., part of a global 13 billion dollar powerhouse tool house of brands that includes Milwaukee, Ryobi, andHoover. In a wide-ranging and engaging conversation, Craig talks about radical innovation, retail go-to-market strategy, leadership for growth, and the epic come-from-behind marketplace win for his Milwaukee brand of power tools as the sixth horse in a five-horse race.

About Craig

Sixteen years ago, I was given the opportunity to become the president of TTi Canada; a world class leader in design, manufacturing, and marketing of power tools and accessories, outdoor product equipment and floor care for consumers, professional and industrial users in the home improvement, repair, and construction industries.

Since then, I have had the privilege of working alongside a team of outstanding performers who share the same belief in setting audacious goals and holding ourselves accountable to deliver those goals while continuing to cultivate a best in class working environment.

Along with our unrelenting strategic focus on powerful brands, innovative products, operational excellence, and exceptional people, we strive to continuously build upon a corporate culture where our employees can realize more and more of their abundant potential.

What inspires me, is seeing people striving to do great work and growing into the best version of themselves. By continuously improving our culture through all of our success we have further leveraged our biggest differentiator as a company, and that is something I am very proud of.

“Show class, have pride, and display character. And if you do, winning takes care of itself” – Bear Bryant

Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.

Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.

Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.

Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.

In this enlightening episode of The Voice of Retail, host Michael LeBlanc interviews Anabel Maldonado, Founder and CEO of PSYKHE AI, a company at the forefront of using psychographic intelligence and generative AI to transform the future of e-commerce merchandising. With a rich background that spans neuropsychology and luxury fashion—having worked with the founding team of Net-a-Porter—Anabel brings a unique perspective to the conversation about personalization, retail AI, and customer behavior.

Anabel describes how PSYKHE AI solves a persistent problem in digital retail: ineffective, one-size-fits-all recommendation engines. Traditional AI personalization relies heavily on transactional history and assumes repetitive buying behavior. PSYKHE AI instead integrates the Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—to determine what products emotionally resonate with users. The result is a real-time, per-user merchandising engine that reorders product pages based on deep learning and aesthetic psychology.

Anabel explains that these psychographic insights allow PSYKHE AI to move beyond surface-level recommendations. Rather than bombarding consumers with lookalike products or static best-sellers, the platform dynamically surfaces items that feel uniquely “them”—even across unrelated categories like fashion, fragrance, and home décor. The system learns from user behavior and product interaction without relying on surveys or manual input, enabling meaningful personalization that adapts over time.

The platform is particularly suited for large-scale, multi-brand retailers where product discovery is a challenge. PSYKHE AI delivers significant improvements in metrics such as conversion rate, time to transaction, and revenue per visitor, reporting uplifts between 17% and 35% through continuous A/B testing.

Retailers with at least 50,000 monthly unique visitors and a product catalog with depth (four or more pages in key categories) are the ideal partners. As AI adoption accelerates, Anabel urges retailers to close the cultural gap between tech teams and merchants by embracing tools that reflect the emotional complexity of consumer decision-making.

For those looking to stay ahead of the curve in retail innovation, this episode offers a compelling look at how emotional intelligence and AI can come together to redefine product discovery in e-commerce.

Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.

Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.

Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.

Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.

In this special encore episode of The Voice of Retail, host Michael LeBlanc welcomes Dr. Rebecca Homkes, a globally recognized high-growth strategy expert and author of the acclaimed book Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times. Dr. Homkes, who holds faculty positions at the London Business School and Duke University, shares invaluable insights into how leaders can build resilient and adaptive growth strategies in today’s rapidly changing business landscape.

As retailers continue to navigate turbulent times marked by rapid technological shifts, economic uncertainty, and global disruptions, this episode provides the strategic guidance needed to stay ahead. Dr. Homkes explains why traditional planning methods fall short in volatile environments and advocates for a mindset shift from planning to preparing—focusing on setting directions rather than rigid destinations. She emphasizes the need for businesses to build frameworks that prioritize learning, customer feedback, and agile decision-making.

The conversation includes compelling real-world examples of companies that successfully adapted under pressure, like IKEA’s innovative warehouse strategy born out of necessity and a Scandinavian amusement park that achieved record growth despite pandemic restrictions. Dr. Homkes’ framework for thriving under uncertainty centers on embracing preparation, implementing a forced reset when linear growth stagnates, and maintaining "aligned speed" to balance swift decision-making with strategic coherence.

As geopolitical tensions, technological disruptions like AI, and global economic pressures continue to shape the retail landscape, Dr. Homkes outlines how to identify must-win battles and prioritize actions that drive sustainable growth. She also discusses how leadership dynamics and organizational structures must evolve to support this adaptive mindset.

This episode is essential listening for retail leaders looking to transform volatility into opportunity and position their businesses for long-term success. Tune in now on your favorite podcast platform and gain the insights you need to thrive in these unpredictable times.

Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.

Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.

Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.

Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.