Cameron Conn is waging new bets on Champlain Apparel

Cameron Conn was born and raised in Las Vegas, the grandson of famed casino owner and operator William G. Bennett and the son of Paragon Gaming CEO Diana Bennett. Conn started out with a hard hat and boots building his family’s casino in Edmonton and running blackjack tables to get the hang of the business before moving up the ranks and overseeing Paragon’s Edgewater Casino and Parc developments in Vancouver. Six months before Parc was scheduled to open, however, Conn quit the biz.

“I had no idea what I was going to do,” he recalls. “I started one tech company, it crashed and burned, I learned a tremendous amount.” Then, in 2019, he had another idea—to help companies operating in regulated markets (like gambling) manage their licensing obligations through centralized dashboards. “It allowed all these gaming companies—with  the expansion of sports betting— to gain market share very fast,” he says. Three years later, after growing OneComply to some 17 employees, Conn and co-founder Aaron Gould sold the startup to Vancouver-based fraud prevention and cybersecurity firm GeoComply.

Conn joined GeoComply’s team of around 700 employees for about eight months before moving on. During that time, as a person interested in fashion, Conn grappled with how to dress in the different professional atmospheres he found himself in. Going from the three-piece suits at the casino to the tech sector was a bit of a jarring transition, to say the least.

“In the tech sector, if you come in with a sport coat, everyone in the company is like, ‘Are we getting fired? What’s happening?’” says Conn. “My options were limited —am I going to go to Brooks Brothers? As someone who loves fashion it was that or very fashion-forward stuff that didn’t fit the setting, or athleisure. There was no modern take on that middle ground.”

Enter Jonathan Richard, who Conn bought his suits from back in his formal days. Richard sold his Yaletown suit company in 2022 and started making polo shirts and selling them online. “I just thought, ‘Why don’t we go back to the classics—polos, cardigans, varsity jackets—and put a casual- chic twist on it?’” Richard says. So he created Champlain Apparel to offer modern menswear for both professional and social settings. The company quickly caught the eye of Conn, who became one of its early investors.

“It wasn’t trying to be athleisure wear that you could maybe wear to work,” Conn says. “It’s about fitting into a proper aesthetic that you can wear throughout your day—bringing back pieces to what they were designed for. A polo shirt was designed for playing polo, but it was a very prep, proper look. We’ve dressed it down—we’ve sort of forgotten how to dress it up again.”

When push came to shove, Conn decided that he wanted to be more involved than just an investor. “I was around [Jonathan] a lot and he was saying, ‘Hey, what’s your opinion about this; what about this?’”

On the day that Conn was set to sign a development contract for a new tech company, he had a change of heart. “I said to myself, ‘I have the freedom to make my own choice at this point in my career. How many opportunities will I have with something that I’m passionate about, something that I find exciting?’”

Conn joined Champlain as the company’s CEO in June 2024 and he and Richard run the business with a handful of contractors. The company has a showroom in Gastown and has launched in 18 states in the U.S. and five provinces. It has officially launched both fall/winter and spring/summer collections.

Richard and Conn had many debates around Champlain’s price point but ultimately settled with something that reflects the quality of the product but isn’t the most expensive tag out there. Conn notes that the most expensive piece in the company’s closet (its crew neck sweater) is $230. “A $300 polo is kind of the norm,” he says of the competition. Shoppers can find button-up shirts, cardigans and polos for under $120 on the company’s website. “It’s not only the clothes Jonathan has created, but figuring out how to take the things already in someone’s wardrobe and give them more value out of what’s in their closet,” Conn says.

Adds Richard: “Everything here is timeless. You can sit on it for 10 years and it’s going to be relevant.”