See our full list of Canada’s Top Growing Women-Led Companies 2026
Sukoshi Mart
Linda Dang launched Asian beauty retailer Sukoshi out of a tiny shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Today, the company has 20 locations across Canada and the U.S.
Sukoshi Mart opened in Toronto’s Kensington Market in 2018 with 300 square feet and a mixed bag of lifestyle goods, snacks and Asian beauty products. Six months later, a major landlord offered founder and CEO Linda Dang a 3,000-square-foot former Lululemon at Scarborough Town Centre. Strictly sensible founders might have paused to perfect the concept, but Dang took the keys.
Today, Sukoshi operates 20 stores across Canada and the U.S., with plans to double that footprint within a year. About 20% of sales are online, while the rest still depend on the decidedly analog act of touching and smelling a serum in-store before taking it home.
Dang says she couldn’t have done it without her guiding mantra: “We’ll figure it out.” Or in other words, momentum beats perfection.
Early on, she was tempted by the usual entrepreneurial delusion—that strategy must be airtight, branding immaculate, and logistics pristine before anything sees daylight. Then COVID-19 arrived, and lockdowns shuttered her entirely brick-and-mortar business.
So Sukoshi launched e-commerce in under a month; its retail beauty consultants became content creators and store leads morphed into project managers. The first day online brought in $18,000. Each order took 30 minutes to pack and the website was functional rather than fabulous, but it worked. Over time, the details fell into place—Sukoshi’s current site is polished, its logistics streamlined, and same-day shipping routine.
Dang’s non-negotiable is customer experience: guided skin care analysis, educated staff, an airy store design that makes 5,000 SKUs feel navigable to customers who may not be familiar with Asian beauty. Leaders love to talk about vision, but sometimes, the harder discipline is resisting the urge to polish it to death before anyone can buy it.
Bold Canine
Bold Canine CEO Caroline Bolduc founded the company in 2005 and grew it into a roughly $20-million business.
Just as raw pet food maker Bold Canine was preparing to ex-pand into the U.S. early in 2024, it implemented a new enterprise software system meant to support the next phase of growth. Instead of smoothing that transition, the system became a stress test that exposed gaps in the company’s infrastructure.
Installed without enough specialized oversight, the system produced flawed inventory data. Packaging that appeared available in the system wasn’t actually on hand. Decisions were made on that basis, creating production slowdowns and putting pressure on retail relationships. By 2024, operational strain became visible, and it took nearly six months to stabilize operations.
For CEO Caroline Bolduc, who founded the company in 2005 and grew it into a roughly $20-million business with its Bold By Nature product line in approximately 3,000 stores across Canada and the U.S., the experience forced a hard realization: Growth had outpaced the systems designed to support it. “Top-line momentum can really hide weaknesses in your internal systems,” she says.
For years, the company operated with a tight-knit, loyal team capable of wearing multiple hats. That model worked through the initial climb and national expansion, but U.S. growth added complexity just as operational complexity increased. There was no true management layer, so when the software system’s cracks surfaced, there wasn’t enough infrastructure to absorb the shock.
Beginning in 2024 and accelerating through 2025, Bolduc moved to rebuild from the top down. The company hired a financial controller and a general manager, brought in a specialist to correct the software system implementation, and began redefining roles so long-time employees aren’t stretched across unrelated functions. Additional hires—a plant manager and a supply chain lead—are planned as part of the next phase of stabilization.
The lesson Bolduc now carries into every decision is to build the internal architecture before growth demands it.
Coconut Software
Coconut Software’s Katherine Regnier learned the hard way why it’s important to get comfortable saying no.
By 2018, Coconut Software—which CEO and founder Katherine Regnier started in 2011 with a $5,000 bank loan—had al-ready undergone one major reinvention. What began as online appointment scheduling for small businesses (massage therapists and salons paying $20 a month) had evolved into enterprise software. Then the company lost an important enterprise retail customer, suggesting to Regnier that Coconut was spread too thin.
Regnier realized that while retail clients had to retrain shoppers to book appointments online rather than walk in, banks and credit unions already operate in a world where customers expect to schedule time with an advisor. When it comes to money—retirement, mortgages, inheritances—people want to speak to a human. That insight led to a sharper pivot in 2019: focusing on financial institutions.
Today, the 120-person company works with major brands including U.S. Bank, National Bank Financial; and one of Canada’s Big Six banks; has raised $40 million; and supports contracts worth up to $2 million annually per customer. For Regnier, the lesson is in disciplined focus. “We have to be clear, concise and consistent on what we’re willing to do—and what we’re willing to say no to,” she said. “It’s so easy to keep saying yes, but it creates noise.”
Each year, the company defines just three or four “winning milestones,” and ignores the rest. Partnerships and funding conversations are filtered through the same lens: does this deepen our position in financial services?
Many companies chase growth by adding, but Regnier’s experience suggests that scale sometimes comes when you narrow your field of vision and commit to serving one industry exceptionally well.
Spring Living
Lois Cormack, CEO of Spring Living Retirement Communities, has been working in the industry since she was a teenager—and she’s still smiling.
In 2021, still deep in the COVID-19 era, retirement homes were the last thing most investors wanted to touch. Lois Cormack, founding partner and CEO of Spring Living Retirement Communities, saw the picture differently: There can be possibility even in difficult seasons, if you’re prepared.
Cormack teamed up that year with five partners from the Baz Group, bringing real estate and banking expertise to pair with her decades of senior-living operating experience. She’d started in the industry at 15, moved quickly into management and later led major growth runs—most notably as CEO of Sienna Senior Living, where she tripled the company’s size. Spring Living would be different: a private-equity platform built around a tight thesis and fast execution.
Spring Living would buy, not build, focusing on mid-market, private-pay retirement homes in primary and secondary markets—often older properties (in a sector where about 60% of homes are over 20 years old) that were under-occupied, under-invested, and operationally tired. The goal was turnaround value: invest capital; improve food, care and programming; and raise the standard without pricing residents out.
Cormack says that opportunity only works when it’s anchored to alignment. She and her partners set clear investment criteria early, and stuck to them. That internal clarity made it possible to move quickly on acquisitions, and scale fast: from two homes in 2021 to 29 homes by the end of this quarter, across the Toronto region, Ottawa and the greater Montreal area. Spring Living now has more than 1,000 employees, and Cormack pins that growth to clear, value-attuned strategy.