Entrepreneur of the Year 2024: Gary Lenett designed Vancouver-based Duer to help people move

THE KICKOFF: Gary Lenett didn’t originally want to be in the fashion business. But blood has a way of running thick. When his father, who was managing a clothing manufacturing business, fell ill, Lenett at first convinced his brother to take it on. “I said, ‘Please go help Dad, because I want to go to law school,’” Lenett recalls.

Ten years later, while Lenett was at his desk at the Vancouver office of legal giant Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, his phone rang. “My brother called and said he needed some help for a year,” he says. “I took a sabbatical to help him build a brand.”

Lenett, his brother and his father ended up steering Pimlico Apparel to become one of the larger denim manufacturers in North America. “We did business with anyone you could think of that makes denim,” says Lenett. “We had programs with everyone from Costco to Lululemon to Nordstrom to Harley Davidson.”

Pimlico had some 450 employees before, as Lenett says, “manufacturing in North America went the way of the dinosaur.” Lenett wound down that business and closed its factory in a process that he calls “painful.” He ended up doing work for different clothing companies, including a fast fashion brand for young women, but the passion that had burned for years was starting to fade.

“I came back after one trip overseas and said I was done—I didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t want to be on a plane all the time, and I started feeling really unhealthy,” he says. “I gave up my car, started riding my bike everywhere. But whenever I had an important meeting and wanted to ride my bike to it, I couldn’t find any performance apparel that would look good enough.”

ACTION PLAN: Lenett started Vancouver-based Duer in 2014 at the age of 56 with the promise of providing stylish, active gear for everyday wear. “I thought maybe it would be a little retirement gig,” he says with a laugh. “Sometimes that’s what happens when you don’t clutch too hard: the world manifests and it blows up.”

Lenett admits the company was perhaps a touch ahead of its time. “When I back up, it’s part of the functional fashion movement, and we were first to market with this,” he says. Duer started small but grew quickly. And then the pandemic hit. “It was crazy—the pandemic really drove our business because the benefit to our pants is that you can do anything you want in a day and you’re going to be comfortable.”

CLOSING STATEMENT: Growth has slowed a little since the pandemic, but Lenett contends that the company, which has around 200 employees spread across its head office, retail stores and distribution centres, is “still growing at a good clip.” In July, Duer opened up its seventh retail store in Ottawa and is on track to hit about $50 million in revenue this year. “The big thing for us is to stay focused on our mission and not get distracted by all the noise out there,” he says.

Q+A

What’s your most-used app?

I have a terrible sense of direction, so probably Google Maps. I’m also a 40-year veteran of meditation, so Sam Harris’s Waking Up app.

Who has been your most influential role model?

My father was a serial  entrepreneur and I’m not sure I could have gotten up and dusted myself off if I hadn’t seen that modelled to me as a young man. He had a number of business  failures, but he never stayed in bed, he always got up. He used to say to me: forward momentum.

Do you have any embarrassing obsessions?

I’m in the jeans business.  People often say, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”  But this is really personal for  me; I live and breathe it. When I see people walking down the street, I’m trying to see: is that our jean, is that the right motion? I’m sort of looking at peoples’ pants—it’s a bit embarrassing. We don’t have any huge signifiers on the outside of our product;  it’s part of our brand, you have  to look closely.