Roots Is Branching Out

The Roots headquarters are located in Toronto on an industrial stretch best known for high-end tile showrooms and a notable lack of sidewalks. Past the glass front doors is an airy, sunlit lobby decorated with the kinds of things you might see in a family cottage: overstuffed leather chairs, art depicting the Canadian wilderness and antler motifs—though all tastefully restrained. This lobby gives way to boardrooms and offices (where the antler motifs, presumably, continue). It’s a fitting emblem for what Roots is: the product of an idyllic vision of rugged, hazy-filtered Canadiana—the brand was founded 53 years ago by Michael Budman and Don Green, who were inspired by summers spent camping in Algonquin Park—and also very much a corporation, employing roughly 2,500 people and reporting approximately $263 million in annual sales.

At the helm of it all is Meghan Roach, Roots’s president and CEO of six years. Roach’s ascent to the role was not planned (she grew up wanting to be a dentist, like her father, and, later, an accountant) but nonetheless entirely logical. After years of working in private equity and serving on corporate boards, Roach first came into Roots’s orbit when the invest- ment firm she worked for, Searchlight Capital Partners, acquired a majority stake in Roots in 2015. Roach sat on the board until Roots went public in 2017. Later, she became its interim CFO, leaning on her extensive finance acumen. Finally, the CEO position was offered to her.

“I knew early on what it meant to take on a heritage brand,” says Roach, seated in one of the aforementioned cottagey boardrooms. “It’s a daunting prospect.” Why daunting? “You have multi-generational consumers, and each of those consumers has a different perception of what the brand is,” she says. She likens this to the concept of “naive realism,” the psychological phenomenon wherein the way an individual perceives something is the way they believe it to be in reality. One person’s Roots might be salt-and-pepper sweatpants with the waist- band rolled down; for another, it’s saving up for a made-in-Canada leather messenger bag. “They’re all valid,” Roach says.

To reconcile these disparate reference points, and to move the brand forward, Roach zeroed in on emotional resonance. Enter nostalgia-stoking campaigns, like the brand’s recent holiday ads featuring Seth Rogen dressed in cozy ’70s-cabin-style sweaters. Roots has long offered a kind of wearable national pride (well before it was politically timely), whether through its iconic beaver logo or outfitting Canada’s Olympians. Roach has continued this legacy and inked merch partnerships with two of Canada’s buzziest sports teams: the Toronto Tempo and the Blue Jays. And to shake up Roots’s image (just a tad), Roach tapped designer Joey Gollish, of Mr. Saturday fame, as creative-director-in-residence to bring in more contemporary reference points and inject an intangible cool factor.

There’s something about making you feel good in your skin that develops an emotional connectivity to the product.

“Roots doesn’t feel like it used to,” says Roach, calling it an “evolved, modern brand.” As for the clothing? That has evolved, too. There’s now a new, more minimalist logo option, a range of fleece-lined pieces called Cloud, a sporty range called Roam and the more polished Bowen line, with dressier knits and basics fit for the office.

Roach, who reviews and weighs in on each product, says the team spends a lot of time thinking about how some- thing feels on the body: “There’s something about making you feel good in your skin that develops an emotional connectivity to the product.” Feedback and data remain essential. “The good thing about having retail stores is that you get a lot of feedback from not only the consumers but also the staff,” Roach says. Even in the office, colleagues are always inquiring about one another’s outfits (be they  from Roots or other brands). “That’s the thing about being in the consumer-goods business: You have to be really curious,” she adds.

Her own earliest memory of the importance of clothes came during Roach’s business-school days, when one of her professors banished sweatpants from the classroom. (Ironic? Yes.) Once Roach was in the world of private equity, she had to navigate a strict corporate uniform. Often being the only woman in the room, Roach had no one to take cues from. “So you try a few things,” she says. Still, she didn’t want clothes to be an excuse not to be taken seriously and had to walk a tightrope of caring about what she wore but not too much.

What’s the dress code for a Roots CEO? There isn’t one. Today, Roach is wearing dark denim, ballet flats and a sky-blue V-neck sweater from Roots’s Bowen line. “Having this kind of flexibility in what I can wear is a struggle for me,” she says. “When I can go back to wearing a suit, it’s like a comfort blanket.”

Maybe Roach’s occasional bout of outfit panic stems from the fact that, for her, authenticity comes from within and from staying true to her values. She tends to separate personal success from that of the business (where it can be objectively measured in things like EBITDA, employee morale and charitable impact). “I enjoy work, maybe more than some people do,” she says. “For me, success is about looking back at the decisions I’ve made and the things I’ve done and feeling proud of myself. Not because it got me something but because it was the right thing to do.”

Roach is optimistic about the future of Roots. (There’s a newly opened outpost in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood to celebrate and lots of collaborations to unveil.) She chalks this up to the company’s adaptability. “If we had remained the business we were 15 years ago, COVID would have wiped us out,” she says. And while change is the only constant, for now, so are sweatpants.

This article first appeared in FASHION’s March 2026 issue. Read more stories from FASHION’s March 2026 issue here and subscribe to the print magazine here.