David Labistour's retail career has twisted and turned like a windsurfer riding a westerly.

The CEO of Vancouver-based Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) has navigated his way through several companies in his native South Africa and Canada. Today, he is the first CEO of the outdoor-gear store operator promoted from within the organization.

Fittingly, Labistour used to be a professional windsurfer. He now enjoys mountain biking and many other nature-based pursuits while steering one of Canada's largest retail co-ops.

1. What was it like growing up in South Africa?

Bayne Stanley, Business Edge
Mountain Equipment Co-op CEO David Labistour says environmental sustainability is a key plank in MEC's business strategy.

"It was great, in a way. We grew up in those days without TV. I suppose I almost sound like an old person ranting about changes, but we grew up playing outside. We'd get up in the morning and go outside and we wouldn't come back until eight o'clock. Total independence. Lots of great outdoors activities. I was in the surf four times a week. The surf conditions were fantastic."

2. What did your parents do?

"They raised thoroughbreds. I grew up with horses. In those days, South Africa had no gambling at all. It was very restrictive. No TV. No gambling. The only form of gambling was horse racing. So horse racing was very popular and had a huge following."

3. Did you ever have aspirations to be a jockey?

"No. I hated horses. As kids, we were thrust onto horses. In the summer, you always had to be at their call. I never enjoyed our horses."

4. What was your boyhood dream?

"From about the age of 14, I wanted to be a surfer, because that's where the girls were. I didn't grow up on the coast, so I didn't windsurf until I went to Cape Town at the age of 18. Windsurfing really blew up in the '80s. It became a huge thing. So (my passion) was surfing first, and then I discovered windsurfing. Next to Maui, Cape Town is probably the second-best windsurfing place in the world in terms of the tradewinds that blow through and the surf that you get."

5. Why did you leave your home town?

"At that point in time (age 17 going on 18) in South Africa, everyone had to do compulsory military duty. My military duty took me to Cape Town. I never went back (to Nottingham Road) again. (After completing military duties) I was doing a bachelor of arts degree and in my final year I had the opportunity to represent the country windsurfing, or surf-sailing. Being a young person, I found the allure of representing, and playing sport for, my country more appealing than finishing my university career. I had a professional career, but made no money. Windsurfing was just the most phenomenal thing, especially in high winds and big waves. The sensation was beyond words. It was just absolute freedom. You were living in back of cars and four to a motel room. But that's part of the rite of passage. I never achieved any results - ever. My top-rated event was a world event in South Africa. I came in sixth in the slalom event. In those days, you'd get by. You wouldn't make a lot of money. It was just kids having fun. Realizing I wasn't able to make ends meet, that's what drove me into a career."

6. What did you do?

David Labistour

"I started looking for a job. I had trained in theatre design, lighting design and stagecraft (at university).

I had a background in design, so I went to work for a company called Rex Trueform as an entry designer. From design, I went to product management, and from product management I went into brand management. Along the way, I went to work for Adidas. At the end of the apartheid era, Adidas Germany bought out the licence from the South African licensee and established Adidas South Africa as a subsidiary to Adidas Germany. Adidas brought in a whole new management team and I was brought in at that point to head up the apparel division. That was my first big international experience. After Adidas, there was an organization in South Africa that was making Apollo and Dior products. They wanted to go into new products and they set up a new factory arm and employed me in the senior management of that organization. From there, I (temporarily) left retail organizations (to consult) ... I was (then) employed by a premier retailer to bring my skills into their private label, called Woolworths. Actually, it's not related to Woolworths as we know it. It's more like Marks and Spencer. I was with Woolworths for 10 years and then I came to Canada (in 1999)."

7. Why did you leave South Africa?

"I was spending all my money flying to North America or Europe every year to go and play in the snow. I was at the Pitt River Gorge in Oregon. I'd snowboard in the morning and windsurf in the afternoon. I was doing a snowboard-or-windsurf trip and going up the coastline. The person who ran the guest house I was staying in was a Canadian and suggested I go to Vancouver. I'd never even considered Canada in my travels. So I worked my way up the coast to Vancouver. I was here for two days and fell in love with the place. I was doing the whole tourist thing. Coming down from Grouse Mountain at 10 o'clock one night, I saw a young woman, 12-14 years old, catching rapid transport with a snowboard in her arms. I just thought: Where in the world would a young woman be comfortable catching public transport at that time of night, and where would somebody be snowboarding after 10 o'clock at night? It just blew me away, actually."

8. What did you do when you got to Vancouver?

"I started knocking on doors. The first break I had was through Brian Hill of (clothing retailer) Aritzia ... He was looking for someone to help him bring the structures and the planning to develop his private label.

"I worked with Brian putting those processes and structures in place. I worked with a number of organizations, of which MEC was one."

9. What does it mean to you to be MEC's first CEO promoted from within?

"The organization had developed enough depth within its senior management team. I think it's a significant business achievement. It was the first time they had the depth to be able to do so. For me, I can continue combining my passion (the outdoors) with my work. Also, I was part of the senior management team that's been working on strategies for the co-op over the last four years. I can continue what has gone before with the team that's been doing it. It's not just me. It's the team."

10. What about the co-op model appeals to you?

"Many organizations claim to be customer-focused. Because the co-op is owned by its customers, it really is customer-focused. While we need to be a professional, successful, viable business, we're really driven by the views of our members, first and foremost. You're not looking at balancing what your priorities are. You know what your priorities are. We sell to our customers the quality, the functionality, the great value and, of course, we have the whole duty to bring (social and environmental sustainability) into our business, which makes it different. We do have some very stringent financial goals that we have to achieve. With most public companies, the shareholders aren't necessarily your customers. The shareholders could be people who don't support you in any way other than having stock ... Our shareholders become shareholders because of what they want. They all have a passion for the product and the organization."

11. How would you sum up MEC's position on sustainability?

"Two things that are consistent throughout the organization are our passion for product and activities, and the passion to do things better. It's looking at how the people are treated at factories that make our product. It's reducing the footprint of our product because, just by the very nature of what we do, our product has some impact on the environment. We sell gear to play in the outdoors, so we want to ensure that people have access to the outdoors. We think people act, as well, to respect the environment and respect play.

Beyond that is the Canadian wilderness. Canada has one of the last wilderness areas that's intact. There are very few others that remain. We believe that it's an important part of our heritage."

12. You've talked about the environmental side of sustainability. How do you try to promote the economic and social aspects?

"The social side touches the sourcing and the communities in which we exist. There's a huge social impact in keeping people active, not just in physical health but in mental health. We do try to enable people to stay healthy. From a social point of view, our focus is more on the recreation and the environment, as opposed to social housing and stuff like that. We try and keep our efforts very much in line with what we do.

"From an economic sustainability point of view, we run the organization in a very professional way. We have a great team of professional managers. We think very strategically and long term. You have to be as good a retailer as anyone else out there. Your product has to be as good, if not better. Your service has to be as good, if not better. It's all about being competitive in today's very competitive retail market."

13. As CEO, how do you practise sustainability?

"I come to the office in a small car. I cycle-commute on and off ... I try to buy quality products. I try and resist the temptation of buying cheap products. I'm not 'clean' by any means. I'm just another consumer."

14. What makes a brand sustainable?

"Great product. No matter what you do, if the product is not perceived to be good and trustworthy, you will lose your value. I'm talking about the quality of the product, the functionality of the product, the design of the product, the value of the product and the information that goes with that product ... If the product fails, the brand will fail."

15. What is MEC's position on purchasing goods from offshore?

"In order to provide great product, one has to source the world. The question is: How do you source the world in a responsible way? We do have a program which looks at the factories that we deal with. We have certain requirements that we expect those factories to fulfil. Those requirements are based on World Labour Organization standards. You have to choose partners internationally that have the desire to treat their staff with dignity. We have to back that up by putting programs in place to reduce and remediate those issues and structures. Things like child labour and forced labour, we wouldn't even go to factories like that in the first place. However, we do find that the major issues in factories - anywhere, actually in Canada, too - are health and safety issues and pay. In the past four years, we have ceased some relationships with factories.

But, by and large, we try to work with factories to remediate them rather than walk away from them. However, if there's no willingness on their side to improve situations, we do walk away - as a last resort."

16. What is the percentage split between the MEC brand and other brands in your stores?

"About 50-50. It fluctuates between the seasons. When it comes to soft goods, which are the apparel, packs and tents, we are very much higher in the MEC. But when it comes to footwear and that kind of hardware, we're very low in the MEC brand."

17. What are your brand-development goals?

"We have put a lot more capacity and resource into the development of the MEC brand itself. The MEC brand has to be world-class. We have to continue to develop world-class product that can stand toe-to-toe with anything in the market. At the same time, because we source directly and design (products) ourselves, that allows us to bring really good value to the marketplace."

18. Why have you adopted a strategy of expanding in existing markets?

"About 31/2 years ago, we started to put second stores into the urban markets. Before that, we only had one store in every market. It's being driven by members asking for more access to stores ... We definitely need a second store in the Toronto area. That's in planning right now. We haven't broken ground yet, but we hope to have it up and running by the end of this year. Toronto has become such a huge urban environment that members are asking us to bring stores closer to them, as opposed to them having to travel to stores."

19. What about new markets?

"The only new market that we've gone into recently is the Quebec market, about three years back."

20. If you weren't running MEC anymore, what would you be doing?

"In the ideal world, I'd surf all day or become a ski bum. A ski bum would be good, but that's not realistic."

David Labistour

* Title: CEO Mountain Equipment Co-op.

* Born/raised/age: Nottingham Road, South Africa/ Cape Town/52 * Education: Labistour attended the University of Cape Town for three years, but left in his final year to become a professional windsurfer. Later, he obtained a diploma in marketing and also took several executive-training courses.

* Family: Married to Lianne Labistour, father of two sons aged 11 and three.

* Career: Labistour started his retail career with Rex Trueform and later joined Adidas and Woolworths in his native South Africa, emigrating to Canada in 1999. Upon arrival, he worked as a consultant with clothing retailer Aritzia and then joined MEC as the head of its buy-and-design team in 2003. He was appointed CEO in January.

* Passion: Outdoor sports

Mountain Equipment Co-op

* Brass: Linda Bartlett, chairwoman; David Labistour, CEO.

* Profile: MEC operates 11 outdoor-gear stores across Canada, including two in the Vancouver area and one each in Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax. It was founded in Vancouver in 1971 by six mountain climbers who wanted a store where they could buy mountaineering, rock climbing, ski touring and hiking gear that was not available in conventional retail outlets.

* Stats: The board estimates that MEC generated revenue of $250 million in 2007. The annual report has not yet been released. MEC, one of the largest retail co-ops in Canada, has 2.7 million members across Canada and around the world.

* Structure: MEC is a member-owned co-operative governed by an elected volunteer board of directors. A senior management team headed by Labistour runs day-to-day operations. At the end of each year, profits in the form of membership shares are distributed to members. After assessing the co-op's financial needs for the next year, the board of directors buys back the patronage shares from members.

* Website: www.mec.ca * HQ: 149 W. 4th Ave., Vancouver, V5Y 4A6 * Phone: (604) 707-3300

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)