Roots Canada Ltd.

Roots Ltd.

Type	Public
Traded as	: ROOT
Industry	Retail
Founded	Toronto, Ontario, Canada (1973 (1973))
Founders	Michael Budman Don Green
Headquarters	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Number of locations	120 Canadian and American stores; 65 locations in Asia
Areas served	Canada, United States, Asia
Products	Apparel, leather goods, active athletic wear, yoga wear, accessories, home furnishings
Owner	Searchlight Capital Partners LP (majority stake) Michael Budman and Don Green (minority stake)
Number of employees	2,000 in Canada
Website	roots.com

Roots Ltd. (doing business as simply Roots) is a publicly held Canadian brand. It sells women’s, men’s, children’s, and baby's apparel; leather bags; footwear; active athletic wear; small leather goods; and home furnishings. Their design centre and leather factory are in Toronto, Ontario. Roots employs 1,600 people in Canada. As of May 2013, Roots operated 210 stores in Canada, the United States, and Asia, and ships to 50 countries online.

In 1973, Don Green and Michael Budman founded Roots, initially a footwear company that sold the Negative Heel Shoes, before expanding their product offering. The Kowalewski family and their family business, the Boa Shoe Company, were the first makers of "Negative Heel Shoes", which became Roots' defining product. Roots opened its first store on Yonge St. near the Rosedale subway station, in Toronto in August 1973. A couple of months later, Roots bought the Upin and Ipin Company and opened their first leather factory. By the end of the year, Roots had stores in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and a few locations in the U.S.

As the demand for the Negative Heel Shoes continued, the Roots factory expanded and by the fall of 1975 the factory that had been making only 30 pairs of shoes a day was making more than 2,000. Later that year, Roots decided to experiment with casual apparel.

By 1977, Roots had expanded to 65 retail outlets across North America and Europe, and 250 employees. Roots then began the transition from making Negative Heel Shoes to making footwear with a wedge sole and introduced classic handbags. The company began wholesaling bags, footwear, belts, and leather jackets to Canadian retailers like Eaton’s and Holt Renfrew, and major U.S. retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, and Nordstrom. Roots continued to expand its product line by introducing Roots Design in 1979, their first line of men’s tailored clothing.