Corie Cowlthorp

Corie Cowlthorp was born in Killarny, Manitoba, but grew up on a farm south of Wawanesa. He liked the people in agriculture, the farmers, and he had a passion for growing things. So after spending some time at the University of Manitoba studying agriculture, he took a job as an agronomist for Double Diamond Farm Supplies in 1986. He became part owner in 1988 and General Manager in 2000. Since he has been with the company he has watched it grow to new locations, Pilot Mound and Snowflake, Manitoba in 1997, and Crystal City, Manitoba in 2007. Just as Double Diamond grew, so did his family. He married Roxanne in 1992 and they now have a daughter, Morgan, and a son, Carter.

The most important part of the business for Corie has always been the people. He got into this business partly because he took joy from helping people and looking after people. He saw this quality in his partners in Grow, which is one of the like-minded attributes that brought them together. He says that, “Just being like-minded people servicing like-minded people is huge.”

The whole point of the Grow initiative is to be able to provide more and better for the customer, which was Corie’s motivation behind it. He claims that, “From the start the whole thing was centred around the customer, not us, and that’s pretty key and needs to be key throughout the whole thing.”