The hardest thing, particularly in the fashion industry in Canada, has been access to capital.

Many other countries that Canada competes with, fashion is part of their culture, whether it be the U.K. or Italy. They get a lot of support from the government. I think that's going to be required here in Canada, if we ever want to truly get behind the creativity that is here in this country.

There's a lot of funding of the media and film in particular, literary publishing gets recognized as culture. I think fashion should too.

Fashion has never been considered part of culture in Canada, and I think that needs to happen.

People who come to Canada and have big dreams are really achieving something special from an entrepreneurial perspective.

No matter how hard it is to raise the capital to do that, do everything in your power to buy every property you have occupied if you can. In the end, that will be worth quite a bit of money.

I would say I used to spend 60 percent of my time just to raise capital, when I was growing.