52 BCBusiness october 2016
r e ta i l / h o s p i ta l i t y
F
or Jean-Pierre and
Kate Ross LeBlanc, the
old adage of keeping
business and personal
separate has never
applied. In fact, it was
an intensely personal experi-
ence that led the married
couple to begin Saje Natural
Business Inc.
After a car accident
that left him with serious
soft-tissue damage, Jean-
Pierre began investigating
essential oils in the early
'90s as an alternative to the
prescription medications
that left him with serious
side eƒects and did little to
ease his chronic pain and
depression.
With a background in
business and chemistry, Jean-
Pierre had the expertise
necessary to experiment with
natural ingredients and came
up with a line of products
designed to alleviate
everything from headaches
to pain to insomnia. Kate,
Kate Ross LeBlanc +
Jean-Pierre LeBlanc
Ceo and Co-Founder + Chair and Co-Founder,
saje Natural Business inc.
meanwhile, had a natural
…are for customer service and
retail, which she had devel-
oped as a child helping out in
her mother's fabric store in
Mount Forest, Ontario. The
pair pooled their talents and
relocated from Toronto to
Vancouver to open their ‹rst
store in North Vancouver's
Lonsdale Quay in 1992. At the
time, the concept of aroma-
therapy was largely foreign
to the mainstream. "My ‹rst
few phone calls to landlords
would be aroma-what?"
recalls Kate.
Initial setbacks aside, get-
ting into the natural wellness
‹eld early positioned Saje as
a leader. Along with growing
their retail empire over more
than two decades, the pair
has worked to build cred-
ibility for natural remedies
and alternative treatments
with Jean-Pierre, now chief
wellness o•cer for the chain,
holding public seminars on
the bene‹ts of alternative
therapies and Kate, now
CEO,
working with Health Canada
to establish guidelines and
regulations for natural prod-
ucts. (Saje's products were
o•cially licensed by Health
Canada in 2013.)
With 40 stores now open
across Canada and their ‹rst
U.S. location set to open later
this year, Saje is regularly
listed as one of Canada's
fastest-growing companies.
And with their daughter,
Kiara LeBlanc, 26, now the
company's creative director,
the family isn't planning to
separate business and
personal any time soon.
—Jessica Barrett
WINNER
