"I’m probably not your traditional kind of financial guy.”
The understatement is typical of Gordon Howie. After a long career in finance, the former CFO of Coast Wholesale Appliances was rewarded for skills that go far beyond an aptitude for numbers with a promotion to CEO, effective June 1 this year.
For Howie, overseeing the books was always just the price of admission; what he really lives for is diving deep into a business, and the hands-on interaction that lets him help employees reach their potential.
Raised in Montreal, Howie completed a business degree at the University of New Brunswick, not because he wanted to be an accountant and ultimately a CFO, but because he had an interest in marketing. After his parents relocated to Vancouver, he came to visit one Christmas and never looked back.
“I had never been any farther west than Toronto,” Howie said. “I came out, leaving Fredericton in a snowstorm, and I landed in Vancouver and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, this is part of Canada?’ I’ve been here ever since.”
Howie was attracted by the career track offered by accounting’s articling program and was soon hooked on the profession. Taking an articling position with the firm then known as Price Waterhouse, he enrolled in night courses at Simon Fraser University en route to achieving his chartered accountant designation.
“Once I got at Price Waterhouse, I liked how accounting people can work in the business, like you’re part of the business,” Howie said. But whereas many of his colleagues at the time pursued careers in the resource sector, rocks and trees weren’t for him. “I never really was much on mining and forestry,” he said.
Instead, Howie left Price Waterhouse to become accounting manager for White Spot restaurants, which gave him a chance to work with store managers and get a feel for the operations side of the business. Since then, his career path has taken him from burgers to eyeglasses to video games to home appliances. Before coming to Coast Wholesale in September 2012, Howie held executive positions in finance at Eyemasters/Lens-Crafters Canada, Nintendo Canada, Rogers Communications and Coastal Contacts.
If there’s a common thread in this eclectic mix of businesses, it’s retail; more specifically, retail businesses with multiple outlets.
“Where you’ve got businesses in multiple locations, finance can always play a big role in helping people,” Howie explained. “You help them run the business better, and I’ve always enjoyed that.”
Howie’s biggest challenge in recent years has been overseeing Coast’s transition from a public to a private company. In February 2014 the company’s founders, who owned 40% of the publicly traded company, launched a takeover bid that ultimately succeeded in August that year. Overseeing the financial reporting throughout the transition meant a few late nights for Howie, but where he found real satisfaction was in communicating with staff throughout the takeover.
“When you’re going through this, you’re trying to keep all the staff, both my accounting and IT staff and the operations people in the branches, feeling good, reassuring them that nothing bad is going to happen because we’re being taken over,” Howie explained.
Howie himself couldn’t be sure that he would still have a job once the dust settled, but he had no need to worry. The new owners chose not only to retain Howie, but to name him CEO when Maurice Paquette announced his retirement in April this year.
It wasn’t the first time Howie had been rewarded for his part in a major restructuring. In the late 2000s, after having been with Rogers Communications since 1995, he helped restructure that company’s retail division, when Netflix and streaming video upended the retail video business.
“He was there when the industry changed, and I saw him in action when they repurposed assets at Rogers,” said Robert Quon, a partner at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP who worked closely with Howie during that time.
“Rogers had to make a decision to repurpose assets, to become a distributor to support wireless and cable, and they had to decide who they would trust to do that. They had lots of choices, but Rogers decided Gord was the one they wanted to keep. They trusted him to be in the cockpit.”
The restructuring saw Howie promoted to vice-president of finance for sales and marketing in Rogers’ retail division, which meant working at the newly relocated head office in Toronto and returning to his North Vancouver home on weekends. He gave up the cross-country commute a year later to become CFO at Coastal Contacts, where he would remain before moving to Coast Wholesale.
Howie, who turns 60 this summer, is an avid skier, logging 30 days at Whistler this past year despite the meagre snowfall. (“If he says he’s a good skier, he’s lying,” said Quon. “He’s an excellent skier.”) For Howie, having a house at Whistler is an opportunity for frequent family get-togethers. He and his wife, a teacher, are often joined by their son, a lawyer, and their daughter, who works in real estate in Calgary.
Having risen to the top of the financial profession in companies big and small, public and private, Howie sees plenty of upside with the news of his recent promotion.
“Rather than banking and reporting and all that kind of stuff, I’m looking at getting a lot more involved in the business, which is a lot more fun.”
Gordon Howie will be honoured at the BC CFO Awards gala dinner on June 2nd at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel. For tickets and event info visit www.biv.com/events/cfo .
