A passionate entrepreneur and strong advocate for women in business, Shashi Behl has founded, partnered, and operated various businesses.
When she’s not sourcing the world for the best products, you will find her traveling with her family, road biking, practicing yoga, reading and hearing about other peoples’ stories.
The Founder of jewelry brand Joydrop has a passion for retail.
“At the end of the day, I love seeing people happy. When someone purchases something for themselves or for someone and they know that it’s perfect, there is a bit of joy that just emanates from them. And I love watching that. And I don’t get to see it as much anymore now that I’m not in the stores,” said Behl.
“But I know I get it from the team. Our stylists when they’re talking about the joy that it brings, especially jewelry it brings to people when they buy it. Joydrop, too, was fundamentally different from most jewelry stores. It was for women to buy for themselves or for other women . . . Joydrop is for a woman to come in and spoil herself.
“I love the psychology of retail. You can have the same product in one area and you put it into another area and it’s going to sell there. You really have to pay attention to humans in order to pick up on that. And I like that part of retail.”
Behl was born in London, England and was raised in a small town in Saskatchewan called Punnichy in the Yorkton area.
She went to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, taking economics.
“Honestly, I started out in psychology and I took economics because I needed to do something but I was the person that was doing the peer groups in university, starting Safe Walk. Even in university I was lucky enough to have a prof that was on secondment from the government and he gave me a job,” said Behl.
But she didn’t enjoy it.
“I think in my head I always knew I wouldn’t be a very good employee and I wanted to be doing something of my own and what that was I was going to create it,” added Behl.
Initially she started Body Blocker Company with a partner – sun protective clothing for kids.
“We were well ahead of our time . . . That was when I really discovered that there’s a passion for business. I had a passion for creation. I would call that business my second degree. It did not make any money,” she says.
Then in 2001, she founded Twisted Goods which she eventually sold in 2015.
“At that time, we weren’t making any money and I was waitressing and I got my feet wet in the carts in the mall. At the time, that whole cart program was just starting. I realized when I started looking around in malls, and I was living in Calgary, there was nothing for a woman who just wanted a bit more vibrancy for gift giving. There was just nothing tongue in cheek, kind of fun, in the malls. That’s always a street. But you couldn’t get them in a mall.”
The idea resonated. The first store was opened in the Lawson Heights Mall in Saskatoon. She moved to Saskatoon for six months, wrote all the manuals, invested in software and got the business going. Then she approached Cadillac Fairview at Market Mall in Calgary which “took a flyer on an unknown operator.”
“The rest I just built from there,” she said. There were nine stores when she sold the company.
In 2012, she founded jewelry brand Joydrop.
“It also came out of Twisted Goods to be honest. In the last couple of years in Twisted Goods, I started bringing in Canadian designers. We had a showcase and that showcase took up six per cent of our square footage in the store and it was 22 per cent of our sales. I’m a numbers person,” said Behl.
“We really caught the market before the demi fine market became trendy and it was the same with Twisted Goods. We brought it in the mall and were the first ones there and developed our market.”
Behl is a board member of the Calgary Public Library Foundation and for years was involved with the Alberta Women Entrepreneurs network on its board and as board chair.
She has a keen interest in mentoring women in business.
“My first day as Chair I said ‘look the reason I’m taking this role is I want this organization not to exist’. My big goal is that 25 years from now we don’t have any AWE because it means we do not have to separate women and men. It’s just leaders. But right now we have to push that,” said Behl.
“When women are at the table they bring a different conversation. One is not right. One is not wrong. One is not better. One is not worse. It’s different. And when you get different conversations you get a better result and that is why I champion bringing more diversity and leadership. It’s a cause that’s near and dear to my heart.
“The Library Foundation fits in the same realm. Education is a great equalizer . . . If we all have access to reading and writing and education, that allows us all to shine.”
Behl loves reading, cycling and doing yoga. She also spends a lot of time with her family.
“I’m an active person so anytime I can be outside, I’ll say yes to anything outside. We travel a lot.”
During her 24-year career in retail, Behl has seen a lot of changes in the industry.
“The people that keep on going are the ones that just adapt to what is going on in the environment. The thing that I love most about retail is that it is constant change. Retail is about detail but it’s also about being adaptable to the environment and not selling your brand but changing to the customer’s needs within your brand,” she said.
“We’re humans and we change. Things just happen in life and we have to adapt. And I think retail is a great adapter. You have to be nimble and you have to pay attention to the market . . . I’m not going to lie. COVID kicked my ass. I found it easier to have kids and still keep going than I did going through COVID.”
Behl said she has very much an immigrant mentality so she didn’t have debt at the time. She could refocus on rebuilding after COVID without a ton of debt.
“The tap shut off for us from a multi million dollar company to zero in 36 hours. I gave myself a couple of days. I had a pity party. I curled up on the floor and I cried and then I went okay I have to lay off my whole team and I have to figure out how I’m going to have that conversation and then I had to figure out how I’m going to hire everyone back. When we talk about how it is now, this is easy. COVID it didn’t just build a muscle. It gave steroids to muscles we didn’t even know we had.”
