Ken Keelor has always been interested in products, branding and consumer behaviour.
Throughout his business career, particularly in the grocery sector, he was always a student of consumer behaviour. Why do people buy what they buy? How do they shop? What are their motivations?
As a student he did an MBA in marketing where he was fascinated by consumers. His first job was managing the Vicks VapoRub brand for Procter & Gamble.
“Very early, during my MBA I had an interest in advertising and products,” said Keelor, who today is CEO of Calgary Co-op, one of the largest retail co-operatives in North America with more than 460,000 members, 3,900 employees and annual sales of over $1 billion.
“As a retailer, you see the end products coming to you and I found that very, very exciting and of course I loved understanding consumers – how they shopped in the stores.”
Keelor was born in the UK because his father was a fighter pilot in the Indian air force. But he was only there until the age of two and then was raised in India. He lived in about a dozen places there as his father kept getting posted in different places in the country.
He did a Bachelor’s degree in Physics at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi then an MBA in Marketing at Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies.
He realized with physics it would cost a lot of money to pursue further education in the field in the U.S.
“And we really didn’t have the cash. So instead I applied to a couple of MBA schools in India and luckily got into one where I happened to meet my wife (Antara) in the future,” said Keelor.
He worked for Procter and Gamble in India initially then moved to Bahrain in the Middle East for a couple of years, working for a food distributor.
“I used to go around the world looking for products, put them in a 40-foot container and bring them to Bahrain and sell them in the local market. I had a field force that I hired and my job really was to go scout for products, bring them in and with the field force I hired we would go and sell them into the local market. Maintaining relationships with the local supermarkets was key and of course maintaining relationships with suppliers around the world was key,” said Keelor.
After two years, he and his wife decided to move elsewhere. Canada and Australia at that time were open to immigration and they applied to both countries.
“It just happened that the Australian papers came back. We didn’t have enough postage on them. The Canadian ones came back saying thumbs up. I had a cousin that lived in White Rock, BC and told me that was the place to come to Canada. It’s beautiful by the way so in 1995 my wife and I moved to White Rock, BC, and we both started with telemarketing. We didn’t have a job . . . My wife then began to do some work in retail and we both interviewed almost every day.
“I ended up joining Save-On Foods that had just moved their buying office from Calgary to Langley in BC. I worked for them for just over five years. The now President of Save-On Darrell Jones used to be my local White Rock Save-On Foods store manager.”
He joined the company in category management with a lot of buying, pricing, preparation of flyers, engaging suppliers.
In 2001, Sobeys recruited him and the couple moved to Toronto.
“It was easy for us to move. I moved around a lot in life and we had no kids, no pets and barely any potted plants which was always our policy, even before we got married. We said do we really want to have kids, nobody wants to stay home, we were both quite aggressive with our careers,” he said.
He initially worked in the national merchandising team with Sobeys, did a lot of contracts with suppliers, about 200 every year, and also created a new framework for engagement with suppliers. After several roles at Sobeys for more than 10 years, Keelor left to become Chief Merchandising Officer for Rexall. After a couple of years, he returned to Sobeys for about a year when they bought Safeway.
“I happened to find the ad for CEO for Calgary Co-op in a magazine called the Canadian Grocer. A hard copy of the magazine. Funny story. My wife and I were both sitting at our computers in our study in our pajamas and I had just moved back to Sobeys a year ago, everyone welcomed me back home as they called it and then I said I found this ad. She said well apply, we’re not going to move so who cares,” said Keelor.
He came to Calgary and met the board. He had never been in a Calgary Co-op store before. He chatted with customers. Chatted with employees. Every time he would get a call from Co-op after that he would assume they were letting him know that he was not the person for the job. But each call they would say they wanted to go to the next step.
Finally in November 2014, he took on the new role as CEO of Calgary Co-op. Initially when he came to Calgary the price of oil was elevated but then collapsed. His strategy had to be adapted.
As a successful business executive, Keelor said he believes integrity and honesty are keys.
“This is a small business and a lot of people know each other and if nothing else then for that reason you have to be very careful to always maintain integrity. In other words, you don’t promise somebody something but you would never promise it to the other person kind of a thing. Integrity is really important in how you do contracts, how you do deals, how you even don’t do deals . . . Your integrity, your reputation is very crucial in this business,” said Keelor.
“Another crucial thing to remember is you only get one life to live. So you have to enjoy the ride. For me, that is a two-part process. Number one is finding the person you love in your life which I’ve been very lucky with a wife of 32 years and then second find a job you enjoy so you’ll never work again. Those are two key pieces. But it’s got to be fun, it’s got to be challenging, and I used to always tell my team that winning is fun. Nothing is less fun than losing.
“When you say have fun, well you’ve got to be winning. You can’t be not winning or losing. So winning is crucial and finding people to surround yourself with I would say that are smart and keeping them focused on the strategic goals. Building a strategy is very important so everyone is very focused on it and then getting out of their way so that they can execute on that strategy with all the expertise they bring. No one has all the expertise. So you have to rely on the people around you. I would say that’s key.
“I’ve always tried to be humble in terms of nobody succeeds by their own efforts alone. I’m very passionate in what I say and do but I also try to maintain the humility of the fact that I have succeeded on the shoulders of many, many other people. Many other mentors, many people that lifted me up and believed in me, and what I try to do in this stage of my life is I try to care about other people and invest my time with them to help and support their careers and especially those that believe in me, those that care about me.”
Keelor does several things to relax. One is spending a lot of time with his wife in various activities. Secondly, he goes to the gym as a stress buster knowing that when he is feeling good physically he’s feeling better mentally. That involves kickboxing, spinning, yoga – different exercises during the week.
“And then third my source of energy other than those two activities comes from visiting my stores. I really love visiting stores, chatting with customers, chatting with team members. I know to everyone that may not sound like fun but to me it always has been.
“And I love traveling. Travel is a lot of fun for me as well.”
People often ask him how he got to where he is today.
“I will say, I always put my hand up for the tough jobs. And in fact, I always put my hand up for any jobs, leave alone the toughest jobs. If you look back at my career at Sobeys and even at Calgary Co-op and Save-On, I always took on the toughest jobs that other people didn’t necessarily want to take on. If something would have been in a mess, they would say well put Keelor in, he’ll fix it, he’ll fix it fast. Because I got a lot of things done, a lot faster than others might have done it,” he said.
“There’s people that do a lot of talking and people who aim for perfection, I’ve been someone who has always aimed to get the job done so the company can move forward. And of course, raising my game each year was very crucial. So every year I would challenge myself to do even more, do even better. And I would challenge my team. Every year the bar goes up. A lot of hard work.”
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