Danielle Wilson is the owner of a successful children’s clothing company, but her career began in the fast-paced world of commercial advertising.
Wilson began her advertising career in 1995 after she earned a diploma in marketing communications from the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
Wilson said she knew what attracted her to advertising right away: “A career or living to be made sitting around with a bunch of bright people and coming up with ideas,” she said.
First, she worked for Boston Pizza as an account executive responsible for media campaigns, but she jumped ship in 1997 and, until 2004, worked for a variety of well-known advertising agencies such as Cossette West, Tourism BC and MacLaren McCann.
She soon realized in order to get ahead in the advertising world she would have to get involved in new-business pitches.
“So I quickly hung around for as many of those as I could, and I think in the early days I was getting food for people at midnight,” she said.
She later became a vice-president at McCann, but after giving birth to her first child, she struggled to find balance in her life.
“If I stayed in the industry I would never spend any time with my children and that wasn’t something I wanted to do.”
Wilson packed it in and took some time to spend with her family, but in 2005 she founded her current venture the Sweet Peanut Clothing Company.
According to Wilson, in its fourth year Sweet Peanut’s sales reached half a million dollars, and her clothing is sold in more than 500 stores around the world.
She said the idea behind the company was not only to create suitable clothing for her own kids, but also to provide employment for other professionals-turned-mothers who want to work but can’t commit full time.
“The whole point of having my own business was to achieve an ideal balance,” she said. “So I was really looking to afford people that same opportunity.” •
