It is with profound sadness that we report the passing of entrepreneur, industry trailblazer and former NAUMD board member Margaret Ramsdale. Margaret died in November; the cause of death was not made public.
Margaret started her career in retail as a buyer, then spent the next two decades in fashion as a vice president of merchandising and design. When the company downsized, Margaret was out of a job. That’s when a friend asked her to look at some proposals for hotel uniforms and put together a program. Omega Uniform Systems was born.
In the beginning, Margaret worked out her house, putting samples in a car and showing them around to customers in the hospitality sector. The company never advertised, but grew through word of mouth. In time, she took on a partner, secured office space and eventually hired staff. To streamline the ordering process and heighten customer satisfaction, Omega focused on technology, and developed a proprietary ordering system that at the time wasn’t the industry norm.
At its peak, Omega had a customer base of 250. The company was on the list of Canada’s Top 100 Women Owned Companies multiple times, and won an NAUMD Image of the Year Award for five consecutive years.
Margaret sold the business in 2015 to Canada’s preeminent uniform provider, Unisync Group. She was retained by Unisync as a vice president, but retired in 2018 due to health concerns and family matters.
A NAUMD member, Margaret was elected to the association’s board of directors in 2011, being only the third woman at the time to hold the office. She is credited with raising the profile of image apparel and growing the membership in both the U.S. and Canada. In retirement, she served as a judge to NAUMD’s Image of the Year Awards.
In 2019, Margaret received a Lifetime Achievement Award from NAUMD, the first Canadian – and only woman – to be so honored. “Margaret embodied grace in everything she did. In everything she said,” noted Phil Newman, Cobmex president and former NAUMD board of directors’ chair. “The single greatest honor of my career was having the privilege of presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to Margaret. She was not only everything good about our industry, but she was everything good about our people. Tempering everything she did with great kindness, wisdom and uncanny insight. Margaret was a great leader, mentor, colleague, wife, sister and above all, for me, a good friend. I can’t express how much I will miss her.”
Margaret once noted that she had not chosen a career in the uniform industry; rather, the industry had chosen her.
And we are all the better for it.
