Canadian Business is relaunching in fall 2021, building on its platform as a trusted media brand and social network for the country’s fastest growing companies and their innovative leaders, who are changing Canada for the better.

Canadian Business gives these leaders—and those who want to learn from them—the resources, networking opportunities and inspiration to innovate, connect and continue to challenge the status quo. One of the ways we are doing this is through launching the Canadian Business Leadership Circle, CB’s leader-in-residence program where each month we engage a different C suite-level executive making an impact in their field. As part of the program, readers will have the chance to connect with these progressive-minded business execs for mentorship and professional development through exclusive content, virtual fireside chats and more.

Joining us as leader-in-residence for June is Leena Yousefi, a multi-award-winning lawyer and the founder of YLaw, the fastest growing female-led law firm in Western Canada—and the first one of its kind to introduce a four-day work week. Here, Yousefi speaks with writer Alex Derry about running a different kind of law firm.

(Photo: Courtesy of YLaw)

What sets YLaw apart from other Canadian boutique firms?

We’re trying to move in the opposite direction of the way that traditional law firms are run. The priority for many firms is making as much money as possible and it’s created a very unhealthy environment. It’s not working anymore, either for clients or for lawyers. At YLaw we are moving back to the human aspect of practicing law: Our lawyers’ bios include photos of their children and pets, and what makes them happy. We’re bringing a more personal approach forward for our clients, who are typically going through emotional difficulty.

What drew you to a career in family and immigration law?

I was kicked out of university in the second year of my undergraduate degree. I had failed five out of eight courses and I was going through depression and anxiety, having just emigrated to Canada from Iran. I moved here as a teenager to a new setting where other students didn’t want to be my friend because I looked different and didn’t speak English. That type of rejection and shock had a huge impact on my performance at school and life in general. I was lost, numb and confused. One morning, my mother came to me and said: “It looks like you’re not getting anywhere, so I can get you a job at my bank as a teller.” That jolted me to work as hard as I could and prove everybody, including myself, wrong. I realized I’m good at arguing and writing. I ended up getting straight A-pluses and got accepted into 11 out of 12 Canadian universities. I chose the University of Victoria to continue my education because that was the university that initially gave me my chance and accepted me back after being expelled. The rest is history!

Why did you open your own private practice?

Over the course of my early career I was told by peers and colleagues that I’m irrational, crazy, a loser, unprofessional, or I’m never going to make it. In 2013, I left the firm I had been at for two years and opened my own practice. I had about $10,000 in savings that just paid for renting 200 sq. ft. of office space and a couple of computers. I worked my butt off day and night—I was a full-time lawyer for eight hours of the day, I would come home and work for another eight hours on marketing. Then, within two or three years, I got to a level where I couldn’t service all the people who were coming to me, so that started the expansion. Slowly, I started implementing the things that people had called me crazy for, such as hiring women on maternity leave or part-time, single moms, offering unlimited vacation to staff and having a massive digital presence. Every single policy and major decision that I’ve made so far has paid me back tenfold. My aim right now is for YLaw become the test kitchen of the legal profession’s future, and I hope to change it for the better.

What trends are you seeing in the kinds of cases you take on?

Immigration brings out separation in a lot of situations. Spouses who immigrate to Canada from a country with a different culture, laws, and gender or racial discrimination realize they have rights, can work and can do better. That might run up against the family dynamics they had in their home country, creating differences between the couples that results in separation. If a Canadian resident marries someone in India and brings them here, disputes can arise if the person who comes here files for divorce. The Canadian resident usually claims their spouse used them for citizenship, while the newly landed spouse may view it as: “I came here to a very financially controlling and belittling spouse, and I no longer want to be with them.” It’s phenomenal how much immigration law causes family law issues, and as you can imagine, COVID-19 has only made this more challenging. We handle both family and immigration law because we understand how the dynamics intersect.

How has COVID-19 affected your firm’s practice and workplace culture?

As far as our business goes, we have doubled in size since COVID-19. There are so many inquiries coming in that we don’t have enough lawyers for clients who want to retain our services. But I don’t want these kinds of cases—they’re tragic. Separations are so much more difficult to deal with during the pandemic. We’re doing our best to serve those clients, but it’s been difficult.

As far as our workplace culture goes, it’s been incredibly positive. The implementation of remote work at the beginning of the pandemic raised the question of: Why do we work at the office five days a week?  There are no other female-led law firms of our size in Canada that have implemented a four-day work week mainly because there’s a huge fear that if you work one less day, you’ll make less money. Astonishingly, we’ve increased profits by 10 per cent and staff size by 33 per cent in just two months. I’ve done so many surveys of our staff trying to find out if it’s working for them and the uniform response is that they’re more productive, focused, happier and loving life because that one day off gives them the boost they need to better serve our clients.

What does being in a leadership role mean to you?

I think feminine business practices are the future, in balance with masculine ones. If you look at our society right now—New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel or Dr. Bonnie Henry—women in leadership roles are doing wonderful things. They are coming into business with an empathetic yet assertive approach.

Being in a leadership role is such a blessing in this time because there is so much untapped potential. I’ve dedicated over 1,000 hours of my time since last year mentoring other women—junior lawyers, students—to show them that it can work. Especially since I have an infant, and I’m doing all this while being a mother who isn’t cutting corners. Women with children are usually looked at as a liability, but I think they’re an absolute asset for success.

How are you managing these challenges of being a new mom and running your firm during lockdown?

To be honest, sometimes I’m not. I don’t have a fairy tale story that’s any different from what other people are going through in the pandemic. It’s hard and, at times, horrible. I often go to bed thinking I just want to give up, and then I wake up in the morning remembering that I’m a fighter. I’m a person with a lot of vulnerability and fragilities. Before COVID, I would balance myself with yoga, travelling, seeing friends or getting away from it all. These days, I sometimes feel extremely claustrophobic and unable to balance myself because so many of these options have been taken away. Anytime that happens, I apply two techniques: First, I close my eyes and imagine myself a year from now when none of this is (hopefully) going to matter. I look back and say to myself, “that was tough, but I’m okay now.” I speak to myself as if I’ve come to me for advice, because I find that I give better advice to others than I do to myself. Second, I try to take myself into nature.

What supports and resources should be implemented to help establish gender equity and inclusion in the Canadian workplace?

It’s mutually beneficial for businesses to stop being so rigid. That rigidity is losing women. In my business, I tell women they can work at any time from anywhere in the world if they’re meeting clients’ needs. If you need to take time off and tend to your children, do that. Providing autonomy and flexibility is going to help businesses become more profitable. If you don’t, you’ll lose great talent.

What are the biggest issues facing women pursuing a legal career and what advice do you have?

Fear is the biggest issue. Recently, an articling student came to me and said that at her law school, a partner from a law firm gave a seminar saying that you can’t be talking about work-life balance in an interview or you won’t get the job. That even a woman wearing a wedding band may be looked at as a liability. These people are planting fear in you. Women have internalized that we must put up with things that are wrong to ensure our security. It’s time for us to join together, be unafraid and support each other so that we can create environments that allow us to be more powerful.

The post YLaw Founder Leena Yousefi Is Building a Better Kind of Workplace appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

The pace of digital transformation for businesses around the world was already moving at breakneck speeds, with companies mapping out their digital strategies several years into the future. But like many things, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed all that, forcing entire industries to massively accelerate that adoption and look for innovative technology solutions to adapt to the new world.

Industries operating on the frontlines, such as oil and gas, construction and engineering, manufacturing and logistics, have had to increasingly pivot to technologies that meet their workforces’ needs for both mobility and productivity. Powerful and portable, rugged mobile devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active3, Galaxy Tab Active Pro and Galaxy XCover Pro, are rich in productivity features while being able to withstand all the bumps and bruises that life in the field can throw at them.

Built for anything

Whether you’re a construction worker on the job site, a delivery driver on the road or a nurse in the ICU, chances are your tablet or smartphone is by your side at all times—and that means they’re likely going to take some hits. The Samsung Galaxy rugged devices were built with this kind of treatment in mind. Not only are they IP68 rated¹, meaning they are resistant to dust, water and submersion up to 1.5 metres for up to 30 minutes, they also meet the military’s stringent standards²: tested for drops, temperature, low pressure, high-altitude and shock.

With each device, Samsung has zeroed in on specific business needs. For outdoor industries such as construction and agriculture, where single-handed use and portability is paramount, the Galaxy XCover Pro is a 6.3-inch smartphone that offers just the right amount of screen real estate. On the tablet side of things, the Galaxy Tab Active Pro offers a large, full HD 10.1-inch display, ideal for multitasking and viewing detailed images like blueprints and patient files, while the more compact Galaxy Tab Active3 8-inch screen offers ample workspace and mobility when you‘re moving between work sites. Both the Galaxy Tab Active3 and Galaxy Tab Active Pro also come complete with the S Pen, a digital stylus that enables workers to get the signatures they need for shipping manifests or quickly make notes on building plans while on site.

It may sound like a no-brainer, but for many workers, wearing gloves is mandatory for health and safety and regulatory reasons and quality control. Samsung designed its rugged Galaxy line-up with enhanced sensitivity that allows for interaction even with gloves on³ so workers can stay focused on the task in progress without removing important equipment.

Adaptable and versatile solutions

Many industries have had to adapt to working wherever and whenever the job takes them, often shifting from the job site to the road to the home. The rugged Galaxy devices are not just tough, they also offer several innovative productivity features to help achieve this versatility.

Samsung DeX⁴—which allows users to dock a Samsung tablet or smartphone and use it as a PC—has become a valuable tool for industries such as law enforcement whose officers are mostly mobile during the day but can also benefit from a desktop-like experience when they’re in the field. While in the patrol car, a device like the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active3 or Galaxy Tab Active Pro can be connected to the in-car monitor for viewing full-sized images and video, transferring files, completing reports and more. Frontline industries in Canada and around the world, from police services and first responders to public utility and delivery fleets, currently use the DeX system in their vehicles to keep them connected and productive on the go.

One of the benefits of DeX functionality is that it streamlines the hardware required to get the job done – and less time spent changing from device to device means improved efficiency on the job. To achieve that objective, the Galaxy Tab Active3 and Galaxy XCover Pro also feature Knox Capture, an enterprise-grade scanning app that enables employees to easily capture all major barcode types with an experience that is as intuitive as snapping a photo. For warehouse associates scanning packages for delivery, or nurses scanning wristbands in a hospital, this means that functions that would typically require specialized scanning hardware can all be done on their smartphone, streamlining the experience for both employees and their IT teams.

Collaboration and Connection

From construction to field work, and across multiple job sites and offices, teams need tech that lets them collaborate and stay connected with each other. The Galaxy XCover Pro puts instant communication right at workers’ fingertips thanks to easily programmable keys for a Push-to-Talk feature that can launch Microsoft Teams Walkie Talkie at the touch of a button. For teams deployed across several sites where distance would be a factor with traditional communications gear, Push-to-Talk on the Galaxy XCover Pro lets teams actively collaborate without worrying about radio signals or frequencies.

Constant communication and active collaboration can also be a drain on your battery, especially during those long days in-field, which is why the entire Galaxy rugged line-up comes equipped with a long battery life. When running low on juice, workers on the go can easily swap in a convenient replacement battery so that their Galaxy devices last until long after the job is done–especially key for workers in remote areas where charging on the job isn’t an option. 

Spurred by these extraordinary times, the adoption of new technology and digital tools such as portable, rugged devices is happening at an accelerated pace, allowing industries to not only stay alive but thrive.

To learn more about the Samsung Rugged line-up, visit: Samsung.com.

¹IP68 rating means that the device is protected against harmful ingress of dust and static fresh water at up to 1.5 m for up to 30 minutes, under certain defined test conditions. According to accredited test results, individual results may vary. Note: IP68 rating does not mean that the device is waterproof.

²This device passed military specification (MIL-STD-810H – Environmental Engineering Considerations and Laboratory Tests is a United States Military Standard) testing against 23 specific environmental conditions, including transit drop, temperature, dust, shock/vibration, and low pressure/high altitude. Real world usage varies from the specific environmental conditions used in MIL-STD-810H testing. Samsung does not guarantee device performance in all extreme conditions. Please see the inbox Quick Sales Guide.

³Touch sensitivity may vary depending on glove material.

⁴Samsung DeX can be activated via Samsung Galaxy Tab Active3 with accessories such as an HDMI adapter, multi-port adapter or cable. Accessories and monitor sold separately. Using a genuine Samsung HDMI adapter or cable qualified for Samsung DeX is recommended. Certain apps may not run or may require license (for purchase) on Samsung DeX.

The post Powerful and Portable: Why Mobile Devices Got a Rugged Pandemic Makeover appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

In the late spring of 2020, Morbern’s CEO was faced with a dilemma. Thanks to the pandemic, most automotive manufacturers had shut down their assembly lines, and Morbern—which supplies vinyl interior fabrics to GM, Nissan, Chrysler and Ford, among others—felt the downstream effect of that pause. At the same time, some employees were choosing not to come into work. “I had reduced manpower and very little demand,” recalls Mark Bloomfield. He thought: “I could send everyone home because we have no work…or I can take that free capacity and double-down on R&D.”

He chose the latter, a gamble he says has “paid off tremendously.” Morbern is a major supplier to the marine industry, and one of the vinyl fabrics they finessed during that down time last year became Splash, which “feels like the finest leather” but performs like the most durable vinyl fabric, with a four-way stretch that’s an upholsterer’s dream. “Boat companies can’t keep enough of it,” says Bloomfield. “It’s one of our fastest-selling products.” It hasn’t hurt that there’s been a run on the kind of products that Morbern supplies fabrics for, like ATVs, snowmobiles and, of course, boats. “The buying patterns changed during COVID,” says Bloomfield, pointing out that those fortunate enough to still be employed were taking money they might spend on vacations, dining out or entertainment, and investing in outdoor, COVID-safe pursuits instead. “We brought these new products into markets that have really high demand, and it’s jacked up our sales tremendously,” he says, noting that a few months after the initial crisis in the early summer, their sales were back “more than 100 per cent.”

It also helped that this was not the first crisis that Morbern, founded in 1965 by Bloomfield’s grandfather, has weathered. In 2008, for example, the financial crisis nearly finished the company, which serviced a discretionary purchase market built on credit. “Our business was nearly dead, like 90 per cent down. We weren’t sure we were going to survive,” says Bloomfield, who has worked at the company full-time for 31 years. “I saw how to get through a crisis like that by watching my father manage it,” he says. “Be transparent with the bank, conserve cash, under promise and over deliver.” Faced with his own potential disaster, Bloomfield put the same strategy his mentor, now retired, had used to steer the ship nearly a decade earlier. “It was eventually unneeded, but we had a plan.”

For Bloomfield, Morbern’s continued success—56 years and counting—is the result of two things: The first is a relentless focus on innovation, never sitting still in a hyper competitive market. “We have to work on more projects, because some of them are going to win and some of them are going to lose.” Success lies in making sure your wins outweigh your losses, and being willing to invest in that discovery process. “My vision is for the long-term,” he says. “We put tremendous amounts back into the company, to do more, bigger and better.”

The second thing is what he calls “the secret to the sauce,” and that’s the people who make up the company. Morbern has been based in Cornwall, Ont., since Bloomfield’s grandfather built the factory there in 1965, tired of waiting for the Louis Hippolyte-Lafontaine Bridge tunnel to be built in Montreal. “He said, ‘I’m not going to sit in traffic for two more years, so he looked around and saw what Cornwall had to offer,” says Bloomfield. Located close to the U.S. border, and on a major Canadian highway, it’s also “a beautiful small town,” says Bloomfield, which could be one reason why the company has always had very low staff turnover. “Ten years ago, there were still 40 people who had more seniority than I had years on this earth,” says Bloomfield, then in his 40s. “We had a person who retired recently with more than 50 years seniority.”

The company keeps people around that long by, in Bloomfield’s words, “finding the right person, pointing them in the right direction and then just saying, ‘Go get ‘em.’” His leadership philosophy—which has helped make Morbern a Best Managed company two years running now —is to create a culture where every employee feels like their contribution matters. “When I’m in a meeting, I want to hear what the most junior person has to say,” he says. “The more people who can help contribute, the more successful the company is going to be.” He adds: “The more minds, the better.”

The post Meet the Third-Generation Company That’s Weathered 56 Years of Storms appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Sarah Prevette, CEO of Future Design School. Photo courtesy of Nick Menzies Photography

Created for    

Mark Davidson remembers the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic as a “slow, rolling shock.” He could see it coming, but it was still jarring when it hit.

“We heard from the government on a Friday that we’d be back in school on Monday. Then we heard on Sunday: ‘No, you won’t, and you need to enable at-home learning as quickly as you can,’” says Davidson, superintendent of the Medicine Hat Public School Division in southern Alberta.

Even with so little lead-time, the division managed within a matter of days to develop online resources and restructure classes so that all 7,500 students in 17 schools—from kindergarteners to high school seniors—had what they needed to learn from home. 

Educators across the country faced similar challenges with equal aplomb. While the transition to this new delivery format was burdensome, many found a silver lining in the rapid adoption of digital technology.

“Staff realized that some of the online tools that they feared were accessible to them and required skills that were already within their reach,” says Davidson. 

Future of digital education

Even as students return to the classroom as the pandemic ebbs, digital technology will be an increasingly important part of their education system.

As such, the rollout of 5G technology across Canada is an essential resource for educators and students going forward. TELUS 5G is already available in all major cities and is rolling out rapidly across all regions, preparing Canadian schools for the future of digital education—a future that educators are already embracing. By year’s end, TELUS 5G is expected to cover more than 70 per cent of Canada’s population.

Toronto-based Future Design School helps schools across North America plan for innovation and new ways of teaching and learning. Company CEO and serial entrepreneur Sarah Prevette says educators are enthusiastic about the progress made in technological advancements and delivery strategies during the pandemic, making it possible for them to embrace new teaching methods, in addition to the more traditional.

“Definitely what we’ve seen from teachers is that there’s a reticence to go back to what is considered normal, and they’re seeing all of these new ways to leverage technology to really deeply engage students,” she says.

Among the pandemic-spurred changes, more teachers have employed a “flipped classroom,” which is a concept that has long existed but has only become mainstream in the switch to online learning. 

With the flipped classroom, students receive taped lectures or lessons ahead of time. They are encouraged to do their own research, then come to the classroom ready to practice, discuss or join in group projects.

Student assessments are also being rethought. As Prevette points out, “If I asked you a question and you can Google the answer to it, that’s not a real assessment of knowledge.”

Mark Davidson, Superintendent of the Medicine Hat Public School Division in southern Alberta. Photo courtesy of Delmar Photography

Educators are addressing this issue by coming up with evaluations that allow students to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge through alternative methods like journals, portfolios, discussions and presentations.

Educational apps are also emerging as useful tools in this pursuit. For example, Vancouver-based reading app Simbi is designed to motivate students to read by having them narrate books that other learners across the world can listen to as they follow along with the story. 

Simbi CEO and co-founder Aaron Friedland says after the pandemic hit, the platform’s user-base more than doubled in two months, and that teachers across 104 countries enjoy using it as an alternative to traditional fluency benchmarking. 

With Simbi, more than 130,000 learners can narrate books for an immediate positive impact, while teachers reap the efficiency benefits of tracking their progress remotely through the app.

Access to reliable connectivity is key

In Medicine Hat, where TELUS 5G is expected to come online this year, Davidson says educators are making good use of educational software and apps. The division has also come together to create its own online school called “The Hub,” a remote learning option for children in early learning through to grade 9. 

The 480-student hub began in the fall of 2020 as an alternative to returning to a physical school location or receiving pencil-and-paper packages, and may continue permanently if enrolment remains stable. The services it offers benefit those with immune sensitivities, anxiety issues and other challenges that make it difficult to attend school in-person. 

Face-to-face schools remain appealing to most students, however, Davidson says that “we’ve discovered there is a place and there are students for whom online learning is something we should keep and make sure that it’s high quality and stable.”

These sorts of developments provide a more even footing to students who live in remote communities and already rely on distance education as a tool to learn. Improvements in online offerings will directly benefit them. 

However, access to reliable, high-speed connectivity is key to students’ success and that is something TELUS is actively addressing. Most recently, the tech company announced it would bring its gigabit high-speed fibre network to more than one million more homes and businesses in the coming years, including under-served and Indigenous communities across B.C. and Alberta.

Efforts such as this, as well as the tech company’s ongoing 5G rollout, allow educators and educational platforms to think big. Simbi, for instance, is working with Elders from First Nations and Indigenous communities to narrate stories in their localized dialects or languages, and Friedland is excited that wireless connectivity expansion could streamline this effort.

Friedland also sees significant opportunity for 5G to facilitate the growth of platforms that use the tactics and tools of major social media platforms for education, rather than social content. 

“Artificial intelligence can take student data and provide you with the next lesson, or the next book, based on performance, which creates a highly gamified experience,” says Friedland.

Prevette notes that 5G can push forward the use of augmented and virtual reality streaming in order to “deeply explore concepts that for a previous generation were only theoretical.”

Considering the potential of these next-generation innovations — and the pre-existing demands for high-quality video streaming and teleconferencing—Prevette says building the next-generation wireless infrastructure for our schools is imperative.

“We need to enable students to leverage the technology tools that they’re actually going to use in the real world,” says Prevette. “But also, we need to enable them to explore that future vision of the world they’re going to inherit.”

The post How Teachers’ Pandemic Pivots Are Transforming Education in the 5G Era appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

In partnership with CIBC

On February 28, 2020, Great Little Box Company signed a letter of intent to acquire Ideon Packaging. It was the biggest investment commitment in the history of the packaging manufacturer and distributor, based in Richmond, B.C.

“And then, on March 15, everything essentially got shut down,” says Brad Tindall, the company’s president. “We were sitting there wondering if we were going to get shut down, and how many of our customers would be negatively impacted by this.”

The company started in 1982 making basic brown corrugated cardboard boxes, but has since expanded into packaging for “pretty much every industry imaginable,” says Tindall. Retail and the food and beverage sectors, two areas dramatically changed by lockdowns, are a major part of their business—they make everything from wine labels to chocolate boxes—so they had reason to worry.

They took a week to regroup, and then decided to go ahead with the deal despite the unknowns ahead. “We were really worried about the next six months, but we knew coming out of that, even if it was really bad, the two companies together would be so much stronger to capitalize on any recovery, and support our people.” Within weeks of the acquisition closing, Tindall and his team’s instincts proved correct: “We used a tagline, ‘better together,’ and almost instantly we were able to overcome challenges that came up due to the pandemic, because the two groups were together. We started seeing these emails flying back and forth, saying ‘Better together.’”

Photo: Courtesy of Great Little Box Company

What impressed Salvatore Mobilio most about the family-owned business is the way they navigated such a major acquisition during the pandemic. Mobilio, director and team lead in CIBC’s Vancouver Commercial Banking office, served as the company’s CIBC Best Managed coach, and notes that “they seamlessly integrated their biggest competitor during the worst pandemic we’ve ever seen. To face those challenges and do what they’ve done is nothing short of miraculous. They’ve grown exponentially, and it’s quite impressive.”

Photo: Courtesy of Great Little Box Company

Beyond their business acumen, however, it’s the focus on their people that’s always struck Mobilio, who’s worked with Tindall and team for around four years. “For such a big organization, they really run it as a family business. When you walk in, you just feel it,” he says, recalling his first visit to one of their plants, where there was a band playing outside for employees’ enjoyment, and amenities like on-site gyms and yoga classes or physical therapists that allow people to step away from the line or their desk. “They just treat their staff really well,” says Mobilio. “I know they have a lot of long-tenured employees, which is a testament to that.”

That culture was first built by the company’s founder, Robert Meggy, who started the business with three employees and a 5,000 square-foot plant in Burnaby, B.C. “Our philosophy from day one has been to grow our business, grow our people and care for our community,” says Tindall. “We try to foster a culture where everyone is connected and feels like they have a valuable role to play.”

Photo: Courtesy of Great Little Box Company

One of the ways they do this, in addition to open communication and plenty of outside-of-work socializing (pre-pandemic, of course), is through an employee profit-sharing program. “My wife and I joke that it takes profit away from being a dirty word in the business,” explains Tindall, whose spouse, Christine, is the company’s vice president of human resources. Instead of, “Oh, the owners are making so much money while we’re working so hard,” says Tindall, “everybody gets to share in the win.” And, in harder times, the teams rallies behind the company with the gusto of someone with a real stake in its success beyond an hourly wage. “It puts everybody in that owner-employee mindset,” says Tindall.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, and into 2022, Tindall is confident that the “very stressful” first half of 2020 is going to pay dividends. Thanks to a change in consumer behaviour where we’re all ordering things to our homes instead of going to restaurants and stores, they’ve seen their direct-to-consumer packaging business boom, and they’re ready to make the most of the new opportunities afforded by their merger. Tindall is also looking forward to, restrictions permitting, getting the company’s employees together outside of work again. “Let’s relax, and just be people together again,” he says.

The post This Canadian Manufacturer Made Its Biggest Acquisition Right As COVID Hit appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

“I used to think that great leaders were smart and tough-as-nails,” says Lisa Kalhans, president and CEO of Amex Bank of Canada. “I still think those qualities are important, but the attribute I’ve relied on the most is actually listening to what’s going on with folks in life and at work.”

In the age of COVID-19, the globalization of competition and ever-increasing automation—plus myriad other challenges—Kalhans is one of many leaders who is embracing change and helping to transform Canada for the better. She’s also among the corporate innovators who’ve been invited to join the new Canadian Business Leadership Circle.

Recently unveiled in advance of Canadian Business’s fall 2021 relaunch, our leader-in-residence program connects readers with a progressive-minded C-suite executive each month. Profiled in April, Kalhans spoke to CB about the importance of empathy and bolstering women in the workforce. The program’s inaugural leader, Geraldine Huse, president of P&G Canada, shared her perspective on how to foster inclusivity in the boardroom.

The strength of Canadian Business is its diverse community of readers—entrepreneurs and execs who are challenging the status quo and working to shape Canada’s economic future. In support of their efforts, CB’s Leadership Circle offers resources and inspiration through exclusive content, virtual fireside chats, a dedicated business trends newsletter and more.

In the upcoming months, you’ll hear from a diverse group of leaders-in-residence from across dynamic fields, including:

• Leena Yousefi, Founder, YLaw
• Allen Lau, Co-Founder & CEO, Wattpad
• Michael Tamblyn, CEO, Rakuten Kobo; and many more.

Sign up for our e-newsletter to be the first to know about all the latest Leadership Circle content and events. You’ll also be kept up to date as we prepare for the full relaunch of Canadian Business this fall—with even more ways to learn from and connect with the country’s most iconic leaders.

The post CB’s Leadership Circle Brings You Exclusive Insights From Top Executives appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Canadian Business is relaunching in fall 2021, building on its platform as a trusted media brand and social network for the country’s fastest growing companies and their innovative leaders, who are changing Canada for the better.

Canadian Business gives these leaders—and those who want to learn from them—the resources, networking opportunities and inspiration to innovate, connect and continue to challenge the status quo. One of the ways we are doing this is through launching the Canadian Business Leadership Circle, CB’s leader-in-residence program where each month we engage a different C suite-level executive making an impact in their field. As part of the program, readers will have the chance to connect with these progressive-minded business execs for mentorship and professional development through exclusive content, virtual fireside chats and more.

Joining us as leader-in-residence for May is Marc Ouayoun, President and CEO of Porsche Canada. Here, he chats with writer Katie Underwood about the true meaning of disruption, the future of mobility and the value of making learning a lifestyle.

(Photo: Courtesy of Porsche Canada)

How are you and how have you been holding up during the pandemic?

My routines are obviously changing—even just in the way I organize my day. We travel a lot less, so I have more time to really step back a little bit and look at my daily business, to think a little bit more strategically about my management style, my priorities, my values. In every crisis, there is an opportunity.

Tell us about your career. What brought you to Porsche Canada?

I’m a car guy. When I was a teenager, I had posters of the Porsche 911, Turbo and 959 on the wall. I had a great opportunity to start working in the industry in 1995 for Daimler, where I learned a lot. Then I joined Porsche in 2006, where I started as a sales director in France. After a couple of years, I expanded my scope to retail and network development. I was appointed managing director in France in 2011. After six years in that position, I started to wonder what the next assignment could be—and if you want to have a global view in the automotive business, it’s very important to go to North America. It sets the benchmark for automotive retail and mobility solutions. I thought that Canada would be a perfect place to continue to learn, and now I’m entering my fourth year here.

For outsiders, can you explain the zeitgeist of the automotive industry right now? How are those in leadership viewing cars, drivers and the future of driving, in general?

Cars have been such an important pillar of mobility during the last century. I mean, the whole development of the world has been around cars, and we are now in a time where the automotive sector is really at a crossroads. Now society is changing, with all the environmental regulations that impact lifestyle and city developments, plus pressure from regulators, the change in consumer demands and digitization.

How do you suspect automotive will influence larger realms, like city planning?

Now, it’s really time for the automotive industry to adapt to cities—specifically, how to reduce congestion and how to improve air quality. It’s clear that if we change nothing, the conditions will worsen. There is a lot more knowledge and expertise coming from the different municipalities and local governments, so we are partnering with cities to find solutions through artificial intelligence. The connected car, for example, could communicate with a stoplight to reduce congestion. We’re working on apps that would tell you where to park in a city. We work hand-in-hand with planners to make sure we understand the trends, and how to complement public transportation. It’s almost a blank page of what is possible right now.

How have the requirements for leadership in automation changed since your Daimler days?

I think that the role of management has completely changed over the years, and I’m really happy because I feel aligned with its direction. Before, it was completely vertical; very “I say, you do.” Now, because there is so much automation of tasks, you have more time for intelligence, for relationships and for creativity to think about where your industry is going. What are the new trends? What are younger generations thinking? Things are more horizontal and more collaborative. It’s a reverse-pyramid that allows you to leverage all the talents of an organization to achieve its vision. I have always thought that it’s very important to be transparent and empathetic. In a management role, you need to be strategic, but you also need to care for people.

‘Disruption’ is a very buzzy—some would argue overused—term. What does it mean to you?

For me, it’s about anticipating, being bold and actually driving change—leading the race. A good example is electrification: A Porsche means a roaring engine, full of horsepower. Some people thought we’d be the last brand to move into electrification. But if we didn’t move towards a completely new, “disrupted” powertrain with “disrupted” energy, we would be nowhere today. We know that it’s the right way to bring the brand into the future. We can’t only look in the rearview mirror.

What role has mentorship played in developing your career to this point?

I was very lucky during my career, because I had great bosses. I consider them my role models. I had managers that were a lot more detailed about execution, and some with a lot of emotional intelligence. I learned so much from all of them.

There are some leaders who try to make a career by criticizing others—saying, “Oh, I would do that job better.” I always try to help my staff and create the best conditions for their promotion. It has always been my belief that if I do my job properly, that will naturally happen.

What practices do you have in place to keep you dreaming big?

I think it’s about being very open to the world because, as I said, it is changing very rapidly. I also try to connect with younger generations, and get a bit out of my comfort zone and routine.

When I started in the industry, it was all about going from A to B more quickly than anyone else. Now, everybody is going the same pace on the road, so it’s all about design, engineering and efficiency. You need to understand the driving factors behind change. I spent some time in China to learn about retail—the luxury sector, in particular, and what is changing in fashion and cosmetics—as a way to understand where consumer demand is going. Two years ago, I took an extensive management program at MIT in Boston. It’s just about always learning—and not just when you’re a student. It has to be a lifestyle.

Join our Fireside Chat with Marc Ouayoun on May 25 at 12 p.m. EST. Visit tickets.torontolife.com for details and to register using the code DOWNTOWN.

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State Window Corporation has five core values: passion, dependability, loyalty, honesty and transparency. They were not chosen after extensive consultation with focus groups or created by a marketing department throwing buzzwords around a whiteboard. They came, says company founder Christopher Liberta, from a much simpler place: himself.

“It’s who I am,” says Liberta, who began at State in 2007 with a handful of employees and a singular vision to reimagine how high-rise windows are engineered, fabricated and installed. He whittled attributes of himself down to the five key values that helped shape the business he was building. “They’re simple values, but they were things my parents were strong believers in and instilled in me at an early age.” 

Nearly fifteen years later, those values remain at the heart of State’s company culture, despite now having over 500 employees, 250 subcontractors and more than 200 condo and office towers under their belt, with projects across Canada and the U.S. “We still thrive on our core values,” says Nikki Carvalho, State’s chief financial officer. “Christopher started this business as an entrepreneur, and he’s kept that mom-and-pop feeling, despite the intense growth.” It still feels like family, she says, with a “work hard, play hard” atmosphere that celebrates employees at every opportunity. “We just like to lift each other up constantly,” she says. She credits this reputation for a fun, vibrant company culture to the fact that their recruitment process is often people coming to them, sometimes from a company that had been a client on one of their jobs or a competitor in the window space. “We’ve built a bit of a following in the industry,” says Carvalho. 

And if you’re wondering what, say, passion might look like in this business? As an example, Liberta points to the work of window installers, an integral element of their business. “If you’re not passionate about what you do and you’re cutting corners or looking for the easy way out, that causes a lot of issues,” he says, pointing to the essential functions of windows, which is to keep air and water out of buildings. “Our installers have to love what they do because we don’t stop in the winter. When you’re up 40 storeys and it’s minus 30 outside, that takes a lot of passion.” The company takes the importance of its core values so seriously that they’ll often hire for fit rather than a specific set of technical skills. “Those can be taught,” says Liberta. “But you can’t teach values to somebody.” 

As for so many other businesses, the pandemic has brought challenges to State, not least the fact that they operate a 200,000+-square-foot manufacturing facility that requires employees to work close together. When the pandemic hit, they voluntarily closed operations for two weeks—still paying their employees—so they could make sure they were making it as safe as possible. They also doubled the benefits allowance for paramedical services, which included psychologists and therapists, and have a four-person team dedicated to employees’ wellbeing. When things were more open over the summer, they hosted yoga on the grass outside the office building, and they recently hosted a voluntary vaccination clinic where 450 employees received their first shot. “We put our employees at the forefront,” says Carvalho. “It’s people before profit, always.” 

It’s a strategy that seems to be paying off: Over the pandemic, thanks to a boom in the real estate market, winning business from new clients and territorial expansion, State has run its biggest hiring program in the company’s history, bringing on over 150 staff across their corporate and manufacturing teams, with plans to launch two more divisions shortly, which will mean more hiring. “We’re very fortunate,” says Liberta, who can’t wait for all those new hires to experience State at its in-person best. “There are going to be quite a few big parties.”

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In 1991, brothers Jason and Martin Castellan made their first real estate acquisition: a student rental house in Guelph, Ont. Their first investor? Their dad. They were joined in their business venture by their friend R. Jason Ashdown a short time later and continued to grow their student rental housing business. The three co-founders, along with CFO Wayne Byrd, have grown the business into Skyline Group of Companies (Skyline), now managing $5.4 billion in assets in over 150 communities across Canada. How did the co-founders—who all still work together every day—do it?  

“We’re stubborn,” says Jason Castellan, Skyline’s CEO. “We like to see things through, and if it doesn’t work one way, we’ll try it another way until it does work.” While he says their success has been “unbelievable,” it hasn’t happened overnight. “It’s been a lot of grinding and bringing on a lot of really great people who offer new insight and innovation to our processes, which results in those processes consistently improving.” 

After that first investor, Skyline grew by word-of-mouth. Today, more than 4,500 investors are served by Skyline Wealth Management Inc., the exclusive investment dealer for Skyline’s investment funds. Castellan describes these investors as “everyday people like you and me,” stating that more than half have come to Skyline by way of referral from a friend or family member. Initially, Skyline focused on apartment real estate, offering its apartment portfolio as a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). As the business continued to grow and evolve, Skyline saw an opportunity to establish a second REIT focused on light industrial real estate, then a third focused on retail real estate properties anchored by national-brand grocery and pharmacy tenants. Skyline’s fourth and most recently launched fund focuses on clean energy. This fund was sparked by the rooftop solar panel systems the company had been installing on its properties to create an additional revenue stream. “We’ve always had a penchant for being efficient—and for finding new ways to surface value,” says Castellan, “and from these solar projects, we saw the potential to bring our investors further value by offering an investment fund in clean energy.” 

Most of Skyline’s apartment and retail real estate assets are in secondary and tertiary markets, a strategic choice that has served Skyline well during a pandemic, which saw an exodus from cramped city downtowns. “Like our business partners, Marty and I grew up in small-town Ontario,” says Castellan, originally from Walkerton, Ont. “We played hockey in a lot of the small towns we now own real estate in, like Port Elgin and Kincardine. Each of these towns has its own vibrant characteristics, and we’ve found the same in our additional communities across Canada.” They also knew that these were the kinds of places where people and businesses tend to be “sticky,” having stable populations without the churn that may be seen in bigger markets.  

Beyond the real estate ownership, Skyline creates job opportunities and strives to become a part of the fabric of its communities by finding ways to give back. For example, in Fergus, Ont., Skyline transformed a large unused retail space into a hub for local community support organizations. “Investing in our communities is a crucial component to our success,” says Castellan. “When we’re doing good things in these communities, our staff can feel good about where they work, our tenants can feel good about where they live or operate their businesses, and our investors can feel good about where they invest.”  

The post How Three Friends Turned a Student Rental House to Billions in Assets appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

In 2018, Priestly Demolition won the coveted contract to tear down the Victor open-pit diamond mine near James Bay in northern Ontario—but the only way there was by winter road or airstrip. How did they transport their massive machinery? The answer: piece by piece. They dismantled some of the key pieces of equipment, loaded them into a Hercules plane, and flew it all the way up north, where they reassembled it all. 

This kind of ingenuity is precisely what Priestly Demolition is known for. “[Demolition] is always complex and challenging, and what’s nice about Priestly is that we’re able to get very creative,” says Guy Chartrand, vice-president, business operations. The family-owned business routinely brings down 20-storey buildings in downtown Toronto with nary a scratch to the surrounding high-rises: recently, removing the entire core of a five-storey below-ground parking garage, then popped in a new one so the owner could build a new office-condo complex above it, safely. 

In another elaborate project, Priestly demolished a 750,000-square-foot plant in a mere 10 weeks (six weeks earlier than anticipated), despite moving a staggering 57,000 tons of concrete and 5,000 tons of scrap steel. And today, they’re helping Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital with a massive renovation, deftly managing the highly complex process of ensuring their equipment vibrations don’t impede any of the medical operations, machines or procedures. Sometimes, demolition can be a delicate dance, and Priestly Demolition is the industry’s nimblest company.

With the largest fleet of demolition equipment in Canada, Priestly have sheer power on their side. Included in their arsenal: the tallest high-reach excavator in the country, a whole slew of cutting-edge tech, like 3D scanning programs designed to measure the structures, and innovative software that makes rapid demolitions happen. “We’re pretty much the go-to guys when it comes to demolition,” Chartrand says. “We like projects that are more complex. With in-house engineering, we’re really able to tackle those projects in a systematic manner, well thought-out and well planned.” 

Headquartered in King, Ont., the company has around 300 employees, and are on track to hit $100 million this year. Following their World’s Best Demolition Award win in 2016, they’re expanding, with additional offices in Ottawa, Calgary and Virginia.

Clients spanning many industries want to team up with Priestly, from health care and infrastructure to manufacturing, regional land developers to local governments; and it’s because they believe in collaboration. “We work on developing partnerships with our client rather than just being a hard-closed bid, says Chartrand. “Companies are geared more toward managing risk now, so now they look to us as a partner, and typically develop a long-term relationship, where we move on to other projects with the clients. This is because we apply innovative solutions, smart technology and the best, and most experienced people in the industry to every project we take on.” 

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In 2007, Zak Mroueh was ranked as the number one creative director in the country and was a partner at Canada’s top advertising agency. But like every budding entrepreneur, he envisioned a better agency model. And so, he walked away from his equity and the industry’s most coveted creative job to start Zulu Alpha Kilo (“ZAK” in the NATO phonetic alphabet).

“I wanted to build a company and culture where innovation would be baked into our DNA. We wouldn’t be in the advertising, design or digital business. Zulu was going to be in the bravery business,” says Mroueh, commending all his early courageous clients for putting their trust in a scrappy startup.

He founded Zulu Alpha Kilo in 2008. Their website? A hilarious parody of pretentious agency sites. Rather than issue a traditional press release to announce Zulu’s opening, he had a 10-by-10 “think box” installed at Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square. It was filled with talented innovators and offered “inside-the-box thinking” to passersby, solving their random business problems within 20 minutes. The stunt paid off. Soon after, Zulu was slinging solutions for major brands like Bell, Coca-Cola, Google, Interac, Subaru, Uber and Whirlpool. Over the years, the agency has stayed true to its entrepreneurial roots, working with disruptive, local clients and recently taking an equity stake in Toronto’s Consonant Skincare.

The company has done away with many of the antiquated practices of the ad world. They abolished unpaid internships, replacing them with an innovative “employeeship” program that pays candidates and helps Zulu recruit the next generation of creative talent. And, best and most famously of all, they stopped participating in speculative new-business pitches—an industry standard that asks agencies to pitch costly “spec work” for free, without formal contracts or fees in the hopes of landing an account.

Instead of chasing new business through the traditional model, Zulu focuses on providing exceptional service to its existing clients. Despite turning down over 80 per cent of the RFPs that don’t align with its pitching philosophy, Zulu’s unrelenting focus on its current client base has made it one of the country’s most sought-after agencies.

“By consistently over-delivering for existing clients, we still exceed 20 per cent growth annually through new-business referrals from them,” adds Mroueh. Today, the company has 130 employees (or “Zuligans”) and has been recognized by the likes of U.S. trade publication Ad Age and Forbes as one of the world’s top independent agencies and most innovative companies.

Now, they’re doing something even braver: In an era when many businesses are scaling back or shuttering altogether, Zulu is thinking bolder than ever. With imminent plans for expansion across Canada and into the U.S., they will soon be welcoming more global innovators into the Zulu creative collective.

“In a previous life, the biggest challenge was encouraging creative bravery, and for marketers to see that a breakthrough idea can be the most powerful tool at their disposal. Fortunately, we don’t have that problem. We get to choose our partners, and the clients we collaborate with embrace innovation,” he says. “They know that it can be a game-changer for their business.”

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In partnership with CIBC

Chris Avery remembers the day that everything changed. It was early March 2020 and Avery, president and CEO of Canadian North, a 100 per cent Inuit-owned airline that serves communities in the Northwest Territories, Nunavik and Nunavut, had been feverishly preparing a COVID-19 contingency plan with his team — though he hoped they wouldn’t have to use it.

“We were hopeful that given the unique geography we operate in and the essential nature of much of the travellers that we carried, that we would be minimally impacted,” he recalls. “But I specifically remember the day that we started to see the data showing rapid declines in bookings by 80 to 90 per cent. The sales director from the manufacturer of one of our aircrafts was literally in an Uber with her team on the way to meet with us. We quickly cancelled the meeting and activated our COVID response plan.”

The company acted just in time. By March 15, 2020, Canadian North’s passenger traffic had fallen by 90 per cent. Eventually, the company was able to make up some ground, but passenger traffic remains below half of pre-pandemic levels. The company sees community disruption as the most significant consequence of the pandemic. 

“COVID-19 has disconnected us from many of our customers and the communities we serve because so many people have simply stopped flying,” says Andrew Pope, VP Customer and Commercial. “For those that are still travelling, we’ve had to limit interactions and provide a significantly modified level of service. It’s eerie to walk through empty airports and fly on mostly empty planes. Human connection is one of the most important things that travel enables and it wears on all of us to be deprived of it.”

Like many companies in air travel and across industries, the pandemic has rocked Canadian North’s business — but thanks to their own quick-thinking and support from their CIBC Relationship Manager and Best Managed coach, they’ve been able to survive, and even innovate.

Once they’d decided to implement their COVID response plan, Canadian North’s finance department turned its attention to saving money, which meant freezing all hiring, projects and capital investments, and reducing operating expenses. Crucially, changing their flight schedule led to immediate cash relief, since the company could save on fuel, landing fees, catering, sales related expenses and variable staffing. The executive team even took a reduced salary during the pandemic to help control expenses.  

The next step was finding COVID relief funding so they could mitigate their losses and continue providing a base level of service. “Most of the communities we serve are not accessible by land, and only accessible by sea a couple of months a year, so our air services are their roads and highways for everything from food and medicine to essential suppliers to medical travel. We needed to be open for COVID tests to get in and out of the communities,” Avery explains. They were able to access funding from the governments of Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Quebec, as well as Transport Canada.

From there, Canadian North turned its attention to its workforce, which is between 18 and 20 per cent Indigenous and 13 per cent Inuit. The company applied to federal programs, including the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, but even before that benefit was available, Avery made sure employees who were impacted personally, or who had a family member who was impacted by COVID, received an emergency income supplement. They also ramped up communication, delivering weekly president’s messages from Avery and distributing a newsletter, dubbed #CNStrong. (It ran its course in the fall, but the company is looking to revive it for 2021.) 

They worked to inject a bit of normalcy, too, making sure to mark the events that were important to employees, such as Pride Week, the Calgary Stampede, Nunavut Day and Christmas — even if it was only virtual. Employees didn’t just appreciate the company’s attempts; they also did their best to pay it forward. Their annual Christmas toy-drive had its most successful year ever, and the company was able to reach more children and families in northern communities than ever before.

It’s that commitment to community that really stuck with Canadian North’s CIBC Best Managed coach, Jeff Burns, Market Vice President, Commercial Banking. “The relationship that Canadian North has with the communities it serves truly makes it stand out,” he says. He adds that the company’s ability to practice change management helped, too. “They recently executed on a merger between First Air and Canadian North to strengthen the business and provide increased scale. This required tremendous commitment from their shareholders, Makivik Corporation and Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, as well as a complex integration plan from the entire management team.”

While the company’s team is looking forward to getting back to pre-pandemic passenger traffic, there are some aspects Avery wouldn’t mind keeping. “The pandemic has fostered innovation in the sense of the many changes in how we manage and plan the business, how we operate day-to-day to keep everyone safe and how we have been quick and nimble in adjusting our schedule and services,” he says. Those new flight plans are here to stay. 

The post How Inuit-Owned Airline Canadian North Changed Course This Year appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Before making an important investment decision, one might consider a number of factors, including fees, time horizon, risk tolerance, performance, to name a few. Though, less often are people investing according to the stage of their career. Whether you’re a new hire just getting started in your career, a seasoned professional with advanced goals, or in a transitional period—it’s important that your investment plan reflects your unique needs and evolving financial capabilities. More importantly, is getting started investing. 

The truth is, financial investing is more accessible now than ever before. With tech integration and low-barrier-to-entry options setting a new precedent, generations of Canadians are gaining newfound agency when it comes to saving for their futures. Take RBC InvestEase, for example. The online investing platform where users can sign up, set their goals and delegate the details to a professional portfolio advisor at a low cost. “One of the best times to invest is when you’ve made a change to your financial circumstances,” says Rajan Bansi, co-founder and head of RBC InvestEase. Bansi attests that these periods of change are when clients are best suited to get proactive with their finances. So, regardless of where you are in your career, there’s an option that serves you. 

Not sure where you land? Here are three points of reference to help plan your investing approach based on your career stage. 

Young professionals: think growth

If you’ve recently graduated and taken on your first full-time role, launched a new business or finally landed that promotion—congratulations! This is a golden opportunity to have an important conversation with yourself about your financial future. “Think about your investment contributions as payments being made to your future self,” says Bansi, adding that “once you’ve established that number, commit to making it a regular, monthly occurrence.”

The biggest advantage at this stage of your career is longevity—starting a plan early helps ensures optimal growth. At RBC InvestEase, clients have the option to customize their monthly contribution limit and set an auto-deposit that makes meeting your goals incredibly low-maintenance. The key is to establish a sustainable commitment. With the details of your portfolio (which may vary by client circumstances) available in full transparency, this plan keeps things simple and informative.

Established in your career? Secure investment milestones with asset allocation

Your investing approach is likely to diversify as you mature in your career. While keeping the long-term plan in sight, weigh-in milestone purchases like real estate or tuition payments. While this happens, refresh your investment contributions to reflect your evolving income and allocate your funds with security in mind. A great way to remain confident during this stage is by connecting with an RBC InvestEase expert portfolio advisor, available at your service. 

What about seasoned professionals who haven’t started investing at all? Well, “the answer is simple,” says Bansi. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second-best time to plant a tree is today—the same goes for investing.” 

When transitioning careers or feeling financially vulnerable, plan a course of action

Unexpected job loss, a major change in your career path or taking on an unpaid role can pose a major interruption to your investing plan. The good news is that there are still options to keep up the momentum and remain proactive.

“One of the ways we’ve made investing more accessible is by allowing clients to open an RBC InvestEase account with no money at all,” says Bansi. Opening an account and connecting with a professional is a major first step in planning a course of action. Make deposits of no minimum requirement whenever available—once you’ve acquired a balance of $100², your funds are ready to invest. Moments of financial turbulence tend to be an opportunity where your priorities become crystal clear and while it may be a difficult chapter, this stage plays a big role in your financial future. 

Want another reason to join RBC InvestEase? If you open up your first account today, you won’t need to pay management fees for your first year¹. Learn more here. 

^{[1] To take advantage of this offer you must not have held an RBC InvestEase account prior to April 1, 2021. Accounts opened from April 1, 2021 to May 31, 2021 using promo code AA805 will not be charged the regular 0.5% management fee by RBC InvestEase for 12 months from the date of account opening. RBC InvestEase will notify clients 60 days in advance of any changes to the fees associated with their account as set out in the investment management agreement. A weighted average management expense ratio between 0.11-0.32% will still apply to the ETFs held in our portfolios. This offer cannot be combined with any other offers. RBC InvestEase Inc. reserves the right to amend or withdraw this offer at any time without notice.}

^{[2] Your money will not be invested until your account balance reaches $100 or more. Small balances (less than $1,500) may be allocated to a Small Balance portfolio that invests in a limited selection of RBC iShares ETFs and/or cash. Our Small Balance portfolios follow similar risk profiles to our Standard Portfolios while investing in fewer RBC iShares ETFs.}

^{RBC InvestEase Inc. provides online discretionary investment management services. Other products and services may be offered by one or more separate corporate entities that are affiliated to RBC InvestEase Inc., including without limitation: Royal Bank of Canada, RBC Direct Investing Inc., RBC Dominion Securities Inc., RBC Global Asset Management Inc., Royal Trust Corporation of Canada and The Royal Trust Company. RBC InvestEase Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada and uses the business name RBC InvestEase. In addition, the RBC iShares ETFs in which RBC InvestEase Inc. clients invest are managed by BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited. RBC Global Asset Management Inc. and BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited have entered into a strategic alliance to bring together their respective ETF products under the RBC iShares ETF brand, and to offer a unified distribution support and service model for RBC iShares ETFs. The services provided by RBC InvestEase are only available in Canada. ®/ Trademark(s) of Royal Bank of Canada. RBC and Royal Bank are registered trademarks of Royal Bank of Canada.}

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STRONGER THAN EVER

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NEW WINNERS

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As a designer and manufacturer of steel doors and frames, De La Fontaine makes products that we use every day, and its mark is everywhere — including at the U.S. Pentagon, where its doors and frames were installed in early 2000.

Founded in 1968 in Sherbrooke, Que., De La Fontaine became known for being the first in the Eastern Townships to offer interior doors that had pre-assembled frames for easier installation. Today, the third-generation family business is led by Robert de La Fontaine, who succeeded his father as president in 1982, and Robert’s son Gabriel, who is general manager. It has five manufacturing sites in Canada and the U.S., the fifth having just opened earlier this year in Indianapolis, and the original Sherbrooke facility was renovated and expanded in 2016. That facility alone — which is still the company’s headquarters — now has more than 200 employees; with its other facilities, employees number 275.

The team also now serves more markets internationally, including in the Middle East and Latin America. “We often talk about how we can grow but stay small, flexible and agile at the same time,” says Gabriel de La Fontaine.

“Some customers get worried about the fact that we are growing in different regions and that they could lose the family sense, the proximity and intimacy. But we work hard to make sure that our business model, structure and governance keep us small, even though we are growing.”

To that end, in 2014, he implemented an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system that provided the company with better software that has more functionalities to track this growth. “That’s how the success of a family business happens,” he says. “Someone runs the first 100 miles, someone else runs the next 100 miles and now I’m running the 100 miles after that.”

De La Fontaine achieves that success by keeping the emphasis on providing convenience and quality service for their customers. The company’s product offering has grown to include doors and frames that come in a variety of specialty profiles, including sound-deadening to limit noise and windstorm durability for buildings in coastal areas.

“It all goes back to bringing value to the supply chain and to the customer and making a difference in the industry by giving them not only a one-stop shop but also efficient service,” says de La Fontaine.

Another example of the company’s leadership in the industry — born, in part, of a hope for the business to carry on for generations to come — is its dedication to sustainability. Having adopted a set of ecological principles, it is committed to recycling 100 per cent of its production waste. In fact, the total recycled content of its stainless steel is an impressive 85 per cent.

“The reason we are good at what we do is that we have the right people in the right places,” says de La Fontaine of his team. “They think like customers but act like owners. We value them more than anything, and we show it through everyday transparency and regular communication so they feel like they are always protected — like they are family.”

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After nearly six decades of expansion, Crawford Packaging — which started in founder Dick Crawford’s apartment in London, Ont., in 1963 — now has three warehouse facilities in Ontario, along with distribution centres in Alberta, Texas, Georgia and Mexico. The way current president John Ashby sees it, the company has just “followed our customers to help them grow.”

Crawford provides packaging-automation equipment, materials (like stretch film, packaging tape and corrugated cardboard) and training support to businesses in a variety of markets, including industrial manufacturing and food processing. The 125-strong team works with clients to assess their existing packaging practices and equipment in order to find ways to raise productivity and reduce costs.

It’s a competitive space in which most distributors have access to the same products, but Ashby says that Crawford stands out due to its customer-centric approach. “When customers buy products from a catalogue house, they buy stuff,” he says. “They don’t know if it is the right size, gauge, how to apply it, et cetera. When customers buy products from Crawford, we like to think they are buying the right solution to their challenge.”

Packaging is one of the largest sources of plastic pollution in Canada and the U.S., so the Crawford team actively works to offer energy-efficient machines and materials that reduce waste. One of the ways they do this is by sourcing products globally — such as tray-sealing equipment made in the U.K. and shrink-wrap equipment made in Germany — as the European markets tend to lead when it comes to environmentally friendly options.

Crawford sets up its team for success with internally developed skill-building programs that provide guidance on everything from daily tasks to bigger projects. “A journey needs a roadmap, an Olympic athlete needs a training plan and a world-class cellist needs sheet music,” explains executive vice-president Andy Craig. “Before every pilot takes off and before every surgeon makes an incision, they use a detailed checklist to make sure everything is in place to take them where they want to go. Our programs provide a fundamental guidance system for our employees.”

Collaboration, teamwork and mutual respect are cornerstones of the business. “Our employees are the X factor,” says Craig. “A confidence feedback loop is created and maintained, which facilitates a positive corporate culture. This drives personal and professional growth and allows everyone to be a part of building something together.”

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Remember when everyone took up bread-baking in the first few months of the pandemic? Whether you were doing the kneading or the taste-testing, you can thank GrainsConnect, a Calgary-based supply chain that connects grain and oilseed growers from Alberta and Saskatchewan to global markets. “All that talk of baking bread? Oh, yeah, that’s Canadian wheat,” says president Warren Stow. “That demand for Canadian grain was significant.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the company, which has more than 80 employees, has worked to ensure that service hasn’t been significantly impacted. And it was well prepared with brand-new infrastructure, which includes touchless elevators, its own rail cars and a fine-tuned contactless-delivery process. While this new way of doing things somewhat disrupts the intimacy GrainsConnect has come to have with its farmers, their connections remain strong.

“We typically have people in trucks driving up and meeting the farmer to engage and pick up samples in order to understand the quality of his grain, the size of his operation and where we can bring value,” says Stow, explaining how the company laid the groundwork in pre-COVID times. “There are a lot of big companies that have been in this space for a very long time and have always had a bit of an adversarial approach with the Canadian farmer. We’ve worked hard to have a different, more simplified approach with the grower.”

GrainsConnect also has a community fund that invests thousands into the very neighbourhoods where it finds its growers, sponsoring school expansions, playgrounds, community centres and so on.

GrainsConnect was formed five years ago as a joint venture between two leading agribusinesses: Australia’s GrainCorp, where Stow was previously a trading director, and Japan’s Zen-Noh. It has come a long way in a short time. In 2018, via a partnership with Parrish & Heimbecker, the company began construction on the Fraser Grain Terminal in Vancouver, which will increase export capacity for western farmers. It will go into full operation later this year and will export up to 4 million tons of wheat, barley, oilseeds, pulses and other commodities annually.

That efficiency, says Stow, is a critical piece of the company’s strategy. “Where we didn’t have a legacy in some areas was super beneficial, like with old infrastructure and labour agreements,” he says. And with the financial resources and industry knowhow of its two heavyweight shareholders, GrainsConnect was able to hit the ground running with a modernized approach to equipment and workplace best practices. “Building something from the ground up has really been the best of both worlds,” says Stow.

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In 1984, in a move that would change the company forever, Peavey Industries got some new owners: its very own employees. Four senior managers purchased the company from U.S.-based ConAgra. Norm Nilsson, Bob Reierson, Terry Jellicoe and Rick Anderson then piloted the company so skilfully that they are now fondly referred to as the company founders.

Anderson pulled double duty for Peavey and produced the next generation of leadership: in 2012, his son Doug became the president and CEO of the company. Since then, Doug Anderson has rocketed Peavey to big profits, thanks to moves like starting up the MainStreet Hardware banner and acquiring the TSC Stores chain and the master licence and distribution rights for the Ace Hardware brand in Canada. “Both acquisitions helped transition us from a regional player to a national retailer,” he says.

Peavey Marts sell everything from livestock feed and workwear to garden supplies and decor, while the Ace stores are a blend of traditional hardware stores, building centres and country and garden stores. “Our product mix is tailored to the rural and down-to-earth lifestyles,” says Anderson. The result? Last year saw them hit half a billion dollars in revenue.

Like the four founders before them, employee-owners are a crucial part of success of the business, which is based in Red Deer, Alta. In 2016, Peavey Industries restructured into a partnership model and introduced broad-based employee ownership through a private mutual-fund trust. This model allows all employees to become owners of Peavey Industries. Currently, approximately 10 per cent of the 1,000 full-time employees have bought into the company as employee-owners, according to Anderson. “Being an employee-owned company allows our people to be connected to the company beyond their role or position,” he says. “It allows our employees to grow as the company grows, which means there is a win-win relationship.”

Peavey provides an array of in-house education options, including management courses to help employees learn emotional intelligence and listening skills, and inclusivity training to foster a more equitable work environment. Peavey employees have also formed a “by employee, for employee” society called Peavey Cares, which supports employees in need. Members of Peavey Cares contribute through payroll deduction to the society, which provides confidential financial assistance. The pandemic has meant there are more employees in need, but Peavey is right there to help out. “We instituted a COVID fund to support our front-line employees by allowing them to take additional time off, no questions asked,” says Anderson. “This allowed our employees additional flexibility as they navigated the challenges presented to them.”

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While working for an awful Ottawa construction firm in the 1960s (it doesn’t exist anymore, and it shall not be named), Mike Lundy had an up-close view of how not to run a business. Opportunities were wasted. Rivals were undermined and relationships destroyed. “It was kind of a scorched-earth approach to contracting,” says Sean Lundy, Mike’s son, who grew up hearing those horror stories. Construction involves plenty of pressure: high-stakes deadlines, unpredictable weather conditions, budget constraints. But Mike believed that no amount of pressure justified treating people poorly. Founded by Mike in 1967, MP Lundy Construction has a mantra that Sean, who took over as CEO in 2003, repeats to this day: “Relationships over bricks.”

The approach has served the company well. In 1997, for example, MP Lundy took on its first project for Giant Tiger: a renovation of the Canadian discount retailer’s distribution facility. “I really liked them, and I did everything I could to get them to trust me,” recalls Lundy. That project led to others for the company — a renovation here, a warehouse conversion there — until, in 2017, Giant Tiger tapped MP Lundy to build its brand-new 56,000-square-metre distribution centre outside Ottawa. “This project is a testament to the maturity and confidence of our team,” says Lundy. He turned over the building on precisely the day promised. “And after that, Giant Tiger gave us another project for their new head office without any competition. It’s unheard of that a construction company would not be asked to compete. But that’s where growth comes from.”

A minor generator-room retrofit for Gillin Engineering, owner of the Lord Elgin Hotel, went so smoothly that when it came to upgrading every one of the hotel’s 355 rooms — while it remained in full operation — MP Lundy got the call (and then completed the job three months ahead of schedule). But these smaller projects aren’t just trial runs for clients; they’re also perfect training grounds for greener members of Lundy’s 35-person staff. And the major projects, like transforming a 100-year-old heritage building in Ottawa into the Global Centre for Pluralism? “That’s how we provide a trajectory so we’re able to hold on to our best people,” says Lundy. “Those larger projects give top talent a reason to stay.”

Even in the middle of a pandemic, MP Lundy hasn’t missed a step: By June 2021, the end of its fiscal year, the company is projected to pull in $75 million in construction volume. COVID did give the company a good reason to double down on its technology. Drones now map sites from above to safely develop more efficient electrical plans. Digitized construction sites enable clients and designers to walk through the space remotely and make approvals in minutes, wherever they are. “When you start to look at all these tools in a construction project,” says Lundy, “it’s incredible — and it’s accelerating construction.” That’s a pretty enticing prospect for a company that prides itself on finishing projects ahead of time.

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Sollio Cooperative Group employs more than 16,000 people, its sales for the 2019/2020 fiscal year exceeded $8 billion and Olymel, its food processing division, exports its products to over 60 countries. While these numbers are impressive, at the end of the day it’s the people who guide CEO Gaétan Desroches’s decisions. As he says, it’s the co-op’s farmers who are taking Sollio into the future.

The Montreal-headquartered federation of agribusinesses was established in 1922 when three separate farming co-operatives merged to form Coopérative fédérée de Québec; renamed Sollio Cooperative Group in 2020, it has since grown to also include Olymel and Le Groupe BMR, a hardware firm. The co-op’s members produce everything from maple syrup to cheese. “Right now, we look for opportunities to create a product from the seed to the plate,” says Desroches.

Sollio is also making steps to reduce its environmental impact. The cooperative adopted the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 as corporate-responsibility standards for the entire organization. To help achieve these targets, the company is using an advanced telemetry system to ensure its transport fleet is minimizing greenhouse-gas emissions, evaluating the use of a 100 per cent recycled tray for meat packaging and transforming 33 per cent of the wastewater from its factories into potable water.

Desroches emphasizes that transparency is an important tenet. “Everybody knows the business plan,” says Desroches. “That’s a key part of the success factor for us.” Every one of those 16,000 employees has his personal email, and Desroches says he responds to every message. A testament to the company’s corporate culture is the lengthy tenure of some of its employees — over 1,000 staffers are in the 25-years-employed club. Desroches himself has worked for the co-op for 40 years.

Next year will mark Sollio’s 100th anniversary. With the growth of the company, it’s crucial that there be continuity of leadership with people who understand the big picture. That’s why Desroches is already grooming a successor: Pascal Houle, now the chief operating officer, will step into the CEO role this coming September.

Desroches is also thinking longer-term — he’s focused on what the next 100 years will look like. “We like to create value for farmers,” he says. “That’s the goal for the future of Sollio.”

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When the pandemic hit, millions of Canadians marooned at home suddenly found themselves entirely reliant on Internet services — to work, study, socialize and do almost everything — that didn’t always prove to be up to the task. The further you went into rural, remote, northern and underserved areas, the worse the digital infrastructure got. This isn’t a new problem. “We knew before COVID that networks in Canada don’t always operate very well,” says Rob Lane, CEO of Mobia, a systems integrator based in Dartmouth, N.S. “There is no better time to build broadband networks across the country.”

That’s exactly what Mobia is doing: helping Bell Canada roll out its high-speed broadband network as well as its 5G cellular coverage. It’s part of an array of services Mobia provides — improving infrastructure, supporting automation, optimizing business processes, deploying hybrid cloud strategies — that has allowed the company to grow over the past 36 years. Now, roughly 475 employees are spread out over seven Canadian cities, working with clients in fields that span aviation, finance, retail, mining, government and health.

But it was Bell that prompted the company’s most critical pivot. Mobia got its start as an electronics distributor, supplying all the parts and pieces found in a circuit board. In 1999, however, Bell Canada took a majority ownership stake in four newly merged Atlantic telecom providers, and Lane knew that expanding beyond reselling telecoms equipment would be critical. “We started to gradually shift into the services business, and as soon as we did, we had to bring more people on board,” he says. “The more people we brought in, the more ideas they brought with them, and we really encouraged people to innovate. In our company, leadership comes from everywhere.”

In those early weeks of the pandemic, says Lane, “the world looked like a black hole. We didn’t know if our biggest clients were going to shut down their capital programs. To be blunt, we didn’t know if the company would survive.” Once it became clear that their business would continue, Mobia worked on accelerating another innovation: an app developed with Eastern Health in Newfoundland and Labrador called SurgeCon.

SurgeCon helps manage the flow of patients through emergency departments by analyzing patient volumes and availability of resources to predict when bottlenecks will happen. “The more people you have sitting in the waiting room, the harder it is to spend time on an urgent case,” says Lane. “SurgeCon helps control the backlog so caregivers have the time, space and resources to focus on the people most at risk.” In September, Mobia received federal funding through Innovation Solutions Canada to pilot the app in five hospitals responding to COVID. “These folks on the front lines are tireless heroes,” says Lane. “And we’re honoured for this software to play a role in the fight.”

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State Window has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 2007, when it had just six employees. Today it has more than 550 permanent staff — as well as 250 subcontractors — and has completed over 230 development projects across the country.

“When we first started the company, we didn’t have time to really think about becoming successful,” says founder, CEO and president Christopher Liberta via video chat from State Window’s sprawling headquarters in Woodbridge, Ont. “We just kind of did it.”

Liberta’s head-down approach has paid off over the past decade. In Ontario, the company’s windows, balcony doors and glass awnings will be featured in ambitious projects including the soon-to-be completed M City condo development in Mississauga, Vaughan’s new Transit City buildings and the Time and Space condo complex that is slated to take up an entire city block in Toronto’s downtown core.

And while the company is still considered a relative newcomer compared to some of its competitors, its proprietary technology and dedication to building sustainable products sets it apart. State Window’s R&D department uses a collaborative approach that generates the best ideas by engaging all staff: from architects to designers to construction workers, everyone is encouraged to pitch ideas on how to improve product offerings. No one holds a monopoly on new ideas, says Liberta: “Good ideas can be anywhere.”

Liberta credits State Window’s wins to how well its teams work together to stay on schedule in a sector that is notorious for delays. “Our core values are loyalty, trust in ability, passion and transparency,” he says. “When you have everyone living by that same philosophy, it just makes everything run smoothly. Everyone understands where everyone is and where they’ve got to be.”

Those values have been a guiding light during a tumultuous year in which State Window’s Vaughan, Ont., factory suffered two separate COVID-19 outbreaks. “The pandemic has been very challenging,” says Liberta. “It’s constant calls about how we’re dealing with outbreaks on sites.”

A few of the measures the company put in place include a six-foot-distance rule for employees, increased cleaning of work areas, the provision of PPE and sanitizers, the installation of portable sinks and Plexiglas dividers and the institution of temperature checks at entrances. For those who were unable to work due to illness, the company expedited bonuses to help them with cash flow and provided documentation needed for employment insurance.

It’s been a hard year, but Liberta believes that things are looking up. “We are constantly innovating to stay ahead of the curve,” he says. “We currently have five new products under development and two new concepts in the works that will address changing environmental needs over the next few decades.”

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In late 2009, with his first child on the way, Fernando Petreccia had every intention of taking a break from work. He had spent the previous decade in the commercial-interiors industry — until the recession hit and people were no longer so keen on paying $40,000 for an office suite. Petreccia’s company closed. He thought maybe he’d paint the baby’s room. Then a call arrived from his former banker: a small, struggling five-year-old glass-partition startup called Muraflex needed someone to take over. Was Petreccia interested? “I learned very quickly that I’m not the guy to stay home,” he says.

At that time, offices tended to be dark and sombre — lots of painted drywall and padded cubicles. But as spaces shrunk in the wake of the market crash, Muraflex offered an appealing fix: glass walls that could make those environments feel bigger. “We came up with innovative ideas — like frameless sliding doors and curved walls — that really introduced the element of design,” says Petreccia, president and CEO, who runs the Montreal-based company with his brother, Marcello, the executive vice-president. Early clients like AIG and Condé Nast came to Muraflex for customized work spaces. Starbucks and Google followed suit.

Muraflex engineers its own products, such as glass and aluminum, right down to the hardware it uses. “We really control every aspect of the business,” Petreccia says. “If a client wants something shorter, taller, wider, slimmer — that’s no problem.” It also meant that when the pandemic hit, Muraflex didn’t see its supply chain disrupted.

But the pandemic did bring with it an urgent need for protective screens, so the company quickly created a small subdivision called MuraCare, which builds safe and functional partitions for hospital and workplace settings. Using Plexiglas and aluminum it already had on hand, the MuraCare team designed a number of products — protective partitions to sit on retail countertops but also “domes for hospital beds when doctors and nurses have to intubate a patient,” says Petreccia. As Muraflex began distributing these products throughout Canada and the U.S., the company found itself in a position to actually hire during the pandemic, expanding its workforce by about 10 per cent. Now employing more than 200 people, Muraflex expects to surpass $100 million in revenue in 2021.

Petreccia knows that office spaces are due for another evolution once the pandemic ends and workers return, and he’s confident that Muraflex will come up with creative solutions. “We don’t want to be catching the tail end of the wave,” he says. “We want to stand on top of the wave instead.”

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There’s nothing like a supply-chain issue to turn even the most confident leader into a bundle of nerves. Over the past year, companies in a variety of industries have had to deal with mandatory lockdowns and physical-distancing logistics, but inventory problems hit both small and mid-size companies in ways that few could have predicted.

For turf and irrigation equipment distributor Turf Care Products Canada, the ability to pivot fast helped it avoid the logistical headaches that plagued competitors and reinforced why it’s still one of the best in the country. “One of the strategies that served Turf Care well in getting back up to speed quickly when things started to open up was the foresight to safeguard against future supply-chain delays,” explains president Tim Trimper. “A commitment to take on more inventory much earlier than we normally would have allowed us to minimize disruption of service and maintain product-fill rates for customers.”

While Turf Care specializes in lawn care equipment, irrigation maintenance and parts distribution, it has also learned how to apply its knowledge of inventory management to other areas of the business. In November 2020, the company launched a new e-commerce platform that provides customers with 24-7 access to online ordering of thousands of landscaping and irrigation parts and accessories.

“The pandemic forced us to look inward and do more with less resources,” says Trimper. “Without a pandemic playbook, we were forced to think outside the box and we’ve been successful in doing that.” In addition to maintaining uninterrupted service and launching its e-commerce platform, Turf Care’s 2020 wins include expanding its operations to a new warehouse in Keswick, Ont.

Turf Care’s stronghold in the market has grown by leaps and bounds since the company started in 1975, when it operated out of a single office in Markham, Ont., with a staff of 20. Since then, it transitioned into a 160-employee set-up with seven offices and warehouses in Ontario and Quebec, and it now serves approximately 2,500 clients across the country each year.

Managing the employee-employer relationship is an ingredient in Turf Care’s secret sauce for staying ahead of the competition. The company promotes from within its ranks and creates a strong workplace culture facilitated by social events, like barbecues, and supporting employee-led charitable initiatives.

“We have many long-tenured employees,” says Trimper. “Many staff started working with us in the warehouse as summer students and went on to learn different aspects of the business and move into leadership roles.”

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Like most companies in 2020, Groupe Beaucage faced challenges with the arrival of the pandemic. “We had to reinvent ourselves,” says founder and president Daniel Beaucage, who started his group of car dealerships in Sherbrooke, Que., in 1992. “With the dealerships closed, we instantly had to try to sell cars online. It was a scary time, but we’re much better today than we were this time last year — we’re much more focused.”

What makes selling cars online tricky is that it cuts out one key element. “There’s emotion in buying a car — people want to touch it, they want to sit in it,” says Beaucage. In fact, people often have their mind made up before they get to the dealership, then have a complete change of heart when they see the cars in person. “I’d say 40 per cent of people end up buying something they didn’t think they would buy when they came in.”

That rate used to be closer to 65 per cent, but it has come down in the past few years, he says, thanks to the wealth of information online — people are a lot more savvy. Groupe Beaucage is contributing to that knowledge with its own YouTube channel, AutoPassion. “We have an in-house journalist who tries the car,” says Beaucage. “He’ll test-drive it in snow, dirt or other conditions so people learn more about what they want to buy.”

While customers have been returning to the dealerships during periods when they’ve reopened, some people are still opting to make their purchase online. The catch is that it’s illegal in Quebec to sign car-purchase paperwork at a customer’s house — it has to be done at the dealership. The CCAQ (Quebec’s automobile dealers’ association) is working to change that. “While we were in the pandemic, the consumer protection office accommodated us for a couple of months, but the law has to change,” says Beaucage.

One of the reasons the company fared reasonably well through the pandemic, Beaucage believes, is its dedicated team of 650 employees. Aside from trying to foster a family-like environment, he has a reliable way of ensuring his people are invested in the company’s success. “I have a partner in every dealership,” he says. “They can buy up to a 20 per cent [share in their dealership]. I share the wealth with them, and it’s helped me to grow.”

It’s been 35 years since Beaucage bought into his first dealership with $10,000 and almost 30 since he founded the company, and he has no plans to stop any time soon. “I’ll stay on as long as I can,” he says. “I love it. Every morning, I wake up and I want to work. I want to win. I want to be better.”

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Headquartered in Quebec City, Eddyfi/NDT is a private test-and-measurement-technology group with a focus on non-destructive testing (NDT), which is used to inspect and evaluate industrial-infrastructure materials and systems for defects and irregularities without doing any damage in the process. As the company’s mission statement reads, Eddyfi/NDT is in the business of “health-care diagnostics for the industrial world.”

When the company was formed in 2009, co-founder Martin Thériault’s goal was to develop an enhanced eddy current array (ECA) technology, a form of NDT that would allow for faster inspections and easier analysis than was possible with standard NDT tools at the time. ECA can be used, for example, to assess heat-exchanger-tubing defects or for detecting cracks in stainless-steel materials. Initially working with the nuclear and power-generation industries, the company expanded to serve the oil and gas, aerospace and transportation markets, among others. Today, it offers one of the most advanced ECA systems commercially available, and its portfolio of NDT instruments includes everything from sensors to robotic solutions.

“The objective has always been to push science to the next level in our field and, through that, advance the causes of our clients and allow them to be more successful in their fields,” says Thériault, who holds the title of chairman and CEO. “We kept this same vision from the start until now, a decade and eight acquisitions later.” With more than 1,000 employees and 25 offices around the world, Eddyfi/NDT is now a huge operation.

Thériault credits the company’s success to listening to its customers — a group that includes General Electric, SpaceX and ExxonMobil. “About 80 per cent of our growth, innovation and ideas comes from our clients,” he says. “They have all sorts of challenges and, very often, they’re very big challenges. Because we’ve been proven to be an advanced-solutions vendor, they keep coming to us, which has actually been a great way to fuel our innovation.”

A month before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada, the company made two major acquisitions: Ireland-based NDT Global and Norway-based Halfwave, both developers and suppliers of pipeline-inspection technology. While the pandemic led to increased production costs and delays, and Thériault admits that the acquisitions felt “crazy” at the time, in retrospect, he says, “we did the right thing to acquire these companies.” As an essential service, Eddyfi/NDT continued to operate during the pandemic. With growth and demand on the up, as well as new timelines and costs to consider, the entire team worked remotely to develop a strategy for maintaining a focus on the customer while keeping an eye on emerging technologies that could be useful in an increasingly contactless world.

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John Hairabedian didn’t plan to join the family business. But after he sold the tech company he started in university (which he and his co-founder, Harry Kasparian, grew into a fairly successful enterprise) six months after graduating, he found himself both available and experienced. So when his dad, Greg, asked if he was interested in taking over HGrégoire, the car dealership he started in Montreal in 1993, it wasn’t a difficult decision. “I realized it was a great opportunity to spend a lot of time with my dad,” says Hairabedian. And it’s been great ever since.” Kasparian joined at the same time, as chief marketing officer.

That was seven years ago, and under Hairabedian’s leadership as president and CEO, the company’s revenue has grown more than tenfold, from $220 million to $2.3 billion, and its staff has grown from 220 to about 1,500. “When I came in, I said, ‘This industry has been really inefficient — it hasn’t changed in a century — so let’s become something different,’” he says. “We took all the startup methodologies we’d learned in our first business and we became a technology company that happens to be in automotive retail.”

This forward-thinking approach is largely what sets HGreg, as the team refers to the company, apart: they created their own software rather than using the cookie-cutter technology that’s relied on by other dealerships. “By vertically integrating the software suite of automotive retail, we’re able to create different customer experiences that other retailers can’t,” says Hairabedian.

While the company has plans to expand beyond its current presence in Quebec, Florida and California, it will remain dedicated to the customer experience. “We think that car ownership is an important part of today’s society, especially with COVID — more and more people are deciding to own cars versus taking Ubers or taxis,” says Hairabedian. “Accessing mobility and accessing car ownership shouldn’t be a horrible process, so we’re making a change.”

As for Greg Hairabedian, he decided to keep a toe in and stay on as chairman after scratching his original plan to sell up and retire. “My dad couldn’t be happier with how the company is doing,” says John Hairabedian. “He still loves to hear about all the exciting stuff happening in the company. We have a call, just he and I, at 8:30 every morning, to talk about what our day is going to look like, and it’s my favourite part of the day.”

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When we reach François Rainville over the phone on a Thursday morning, he’s enjoying a rare moment of quiet at the beginning of his work day. “We’re in the middle of a couple of large transactions right now, so I know that by 9 o’clock the Teams app will be buzzing on my PC,” he says.

Rainville is the president and CEO of Averna, a Montreal-based provider of quality-assurance and automated-test solutions. “From R&D to manufacturing, we’re present in every part of the product life cycle,” he says of the company, which serves clients in the automotive, medical-device and consumer-goods industries.

“If a car is working well, it’s because all of its subcomponents have been tested before going to market.” It’s Averna’s job to devise and then administer those tests every step of the way.

To know whether something is working, you need to know how it works in the first place, which is why Rainville describes Averna as “basically an engineering firm. We have over 300 engineers with different types of competencies and skill sets who team up to deliver those test solutions.” It’s highly technical work.

The company is 22 years old, but since Rainville joined eight years ago, it has grown in an effort to consolidate what he calls a “fragmented market.” In 2014 and 2016, Averna acquired three more companies — one in Europe and two in the United States — in order to meet the needs of their customers, which include Facebook, Ford and Johnson & Johnson. “If we truly want to be their international partner in testing, we need to be present on all continents and serve them wherever they are,” he says.

Averna is particularly known for hiring a top-tier, technologically savvy workforce. “Our value prop is that we bring a deep set of competencies to the table,” says Rainville. “Any company will feel comfortable coming to us and asking us to build the testing solutions for their products.” And it doesn’t matter what those products are or where they are in the world — Averna has a presence in seven countries.

When the pandemic ground travel to a halt, employees had to learn how to conduct international business from home. As well, many of Averna’s customers manufacture ventilators, among other medical devices, so they required the company’s support as they scaled tenfold. “Our delivery teams didn’t miss a beat,” says Rainville.

The result was a record year for the business, the credit for which Rainville gives entirely to his team. “I’m blessed with a team that works in synchronism,” he says, “trusting each other and tracking the same vision.”

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Dear Readers,

Following a Ministry of Labour investigation of Upper Crust, we have removed this content from our website.

Thank you to those who brought this to our attention.

Sincerely,
Charlotte Herrold, Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Business
editor@canadianbusiness.com

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Thirty years ago, when Mikisew Group of Companies began providing industrial services to companies working in the Alberta oil sands, the goal was to generate employment for members of the Mikisew Cree First Nation (MCFN). At first, fewer than 10 workers performed janitorial tasks for Syncrude Canada; a little later, dozens more maintained the roads and grounds.

Mikisew Group expanded its services throughout the ’90s: equipment operation, mechanical repair, construction. It started working with more companies, like Suncor, Husky and Enbridge. It even struck up majority-owned partnerships with the goal of undertaking ventures specializing in everything from aircraft management to environmental monitoring to emergency response. Today, Mikisew Group is a major employer, providing roughly $9.5 million in wages for MCFN members between April 2020 and March 2021.

That growth has been propelled by a few big swings in recent years. In November 2017, the Mikisew Cree and Fort McKay First Nations together raised $500 million to buy Suncor’s East Tank Farm development, which includes blending and cooling facilities, crude-oil storage and connections to third-party pipelines. “To our knowledge, it is the largest First Nation investment in Canadian history,” says Edward Courtoreille, CEO of Mikisew Group, which as the economic development arm of MCFN holds a 15 per cent interest in the project. “The investment also set the table for a lot of First Nations investments to occur since.” This past September, for example, six Alberta First Nations acquired an equity stake in a new natural-gas power plant; two months after that, a group from the Mi’kmaq First Nations purchased Clearwater, Atlantic Canada’s largest seafood firm.

And in May 2019, Mikisew Group finalized its own acquisition of Guthrie Mechanical Services. “It’s like David acquiring Goliath — Guthrie was one and a half times our size,” says Courtoreille, who has been with the company for 13 years. Guthrie is the third wholly owned business in Mikisew Group’s arsenal, in addition to its 10 majority-owned partnerships, together providing employment for just over 2,000 people. One-third of the workforce of Mikisew’s wholly owned businesses is Indigenous.

“We strive to be a well-run and effective organization that happens to be an Indigenous-owned company, not the other way around,” says Courtoreille.

Still, he adds, “the reason we exist is to generate profits that flow back into the Mikisew Cree First Nation to fund its infrastructure requirements, education requirements and health and welfare and to decrease the reliance on government support and funding.” That’s why Mikisew Group takes the long view when it comes to business, signing multi-year contracts and investing in developments like East Tank Farm, which will provide stable cash flow for the MCFN for the next quarter century. In fact, with more than 35 active long-term contracts, the company can expect significant future revenues — enhancing social programs, schooling, development and training for generations to come.

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In March 2020, Neighbourly Pharmacy CEO Chris Gardner was in Port Coquitlam, B.C., painting the inside of a pharmacy blue. That’s because when a new store is added to the Neighbourly family, it’s all hands on deck. Gardner goes to every newly acquired pharmacy personally to meet staff and help with the transition from independent business to being a part of a larger company.

Gardner joined Neighbourly as VP of national operations in 2017, when it had just 19 stores — far fewer than he previously oversaw as a Shoppers Drug Mart executive. But Neighbourly, which was founded in 2015 as Rx Drug Mart (it changed its name just this year), presented a unique opportunity: a rapidly growing chain of small pharmacies with a strong focus on respecting the legacy of each store while also ensuring it’s meeting the needs of the community it’s in.

Today, Neighbourly owns more than 130 pharmacies across Canada, and its support centre in Toronto has about 55 employees, with an additional 15 who work in the field supporting pharmacies across the country. While many people assume that Shoppers and Rexall own the lion’s share of drugstores in Canada, in reality their market share is just over 19 per cent, says Gardner. “The balance is independent owners who are really struggling with what to do with their pharmacies, their legacy and their staff when they want to retire,” he says. That’s where Neighbourly comes in. When it buys a store, it doesn’t overhaul it to be a cookie-cutter pharmacy. Instead, the team looks at what each pharmacy needs to make it a success. A pharmacy inside a doctor’s office in Toronto has very different needs from one serving a remote northern community, for example. “Rather than lean away from that, we lean into it,” says Gardner.

Despite the fact that Neighbourly’s pharmacies are located all over the country — including in Inuvik, which has the northernmost pharmacy in all of Canada — Gardner has found a way to keep the team connected. An in-house social-media platform allows pharmacists from Sturgeon Falls, Alta., to Deep River, Ont., to Saint John, N.B., to connect with each other. And this intimacy has helped the company weather the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, a pharmacy manager in Calgary developed a program where he went to an area wholesaler and administered COVID tests on-site. He was able to share his idea rapidly. “Sharing best practices and helping each other is so valuable,” says Gardner. “It actually takes some of the work away from our support centres.”

Neighbourly is on track to acquire hundreds more pharmacies across the country within the next five years. “We’ve got an amazing team,” says Gardner. “And we have the capacity to be able to grow to that level.”

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AAG Tailored Cutting Solutions is the largest Canadian-owned producer of CNC cutting solutions. “In layman’s terms, we make the tools that you would use to cut anything from a soft foam all the way to titanium and everything in between,” explains Luke Hansen-MacDonald, the president of the business, which is headquartered in Burlington, Ont.

AAG works with a wide variety of industries, which means the cutting solutions it provides vary. “The desk used on Sportsnet for the Super Bowl was made on our  routers, and components that go into U.S. fighter jets are made on our water jets,” says Hansen-MacDonald. In fact, the company sold a water jet to NASA last year.

AAG is able to serve this range of customers because it designs its solutions to be modular, offering endless possibilities for customization. “We can easily and reliably come up with a configuration that’s specific to whatever you’re trying to accomplish,” says Hansen-MacDonald, noting the company manufactures everything in North America, allowing it to be flexible.

There’s also the fact that AAG — formed when Ontario-based AXYZ CNC Routers and Ohio-based WardJet were brought under the same roof in 2018 — can call on 30 years of experience. “We have a huge amount of bench strength in industry expertise,” says Hansen-MacDonald, who came on board a few years ago. “Our job is to support our customers so they can get the output we sold them that tool for.”

When the pandemic hit, AAG found itself helping clients who’d previously been, say, making signs for retail businesses retool their production lines to make PPE practically overnight. “Our machines were used for everything from masks to hospital beds. We even had a letter from the Pentagon telling us that we had to get them a machine as quickly as possible,” recalls Hansen-MacDonald. “I’m so proud of my team for keeping our factory running and going out in the field and supporting our customers.” The company also launched an online forum called Fabricators Fighting COVID, which allows people in the industry to share ideas. “It empowered a lot of fabricators out there to say ‘Okay, my business is down, but I have the equipment to help my local retirement home or keep the economy moving.’” As a result, millions of pieces of PPE were produced on AAG equipment.

Looking to the future, the company has a record number of new products coming out and is investing heavily in its 250-person team. “We didn’t slow down through COVID,” says Hansen-MacDonald, who hints at cloud-integrated smart tools to come soon. “We took it as an opportunity to focus on making ourselves better and coming up with new solutions for our customers.”

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Three decades ago, Préval AG — now the largest vertically integrated veal and lamb company in North America — had a staff of one: Fabien Fontaine. “It made the payroll simple,” says the founder and president, who now heads a staff of 1,200. Farmers, technicians, packers, slaughterhouse workers, drivers and distribution experts work at 130 farms, from Brazil to the United States to Saint-Hyacinthe, Que., on the outskirts of Montreal, where Préval is also headquartered.

One at a time, Préval partnered with small agricultural businesses — which had people and land but needed funding — to help them get started. As his business grew, Fontaine looked to his family for help. “My brother Donald joined in 1990 to help with transportation, and then my younger brother, Alexandre, an engineer, came in after that,” says the eldest Fontaine brother. His niece Stéphanie Fontaine joined the company a decade ago as an accounting assistant.

“Fabien’s very humble and hardworking,” says Stéphanie, now the manager of Préval AG, of her uncle’s management style. “He’s at the farm all the time — early and on weekends. He gets in there and gets dirty.” Any farmer will tell you the work is never-ending — it’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week — so first and foremost you have to love it. So, too, must each and every hire at Préval. “We have all kinds of people, and they’re all different [and have] different needs, but the thing they have in common is passion,” says Stéphanie. “If you’re not passionate, you can’t work here.”

“You also need to be picky about details,” says Fabien. Technology helps immensely, having completely transformed the industry since Préval’s founding in 1989. His farms today are closely monitored via cameras, every animal is weighed, as is the grain they’ve consumed, and everything from propane consumption to the temperature of the milk the animals drink is measured and controlled. Still, no matter how cutting-edge technology gets, farmers in general — and Préval employees in particular — require an intuition that can’t be measured. “The best farmers are like mothers,” says Stéphanie. “They notice that one animal’s not eating as much as usual or that one’s not feeling well, and they nurture them.”

As such, trust in Préval employees is paramount, as is having the leeway to accommodate the fickle nature of farming, which changes season by season and region to region.

“Fabien lets us make our own decisions, good or bad,” says Stéphanie. A recent good one: Famille Fontaine, a purple-packaged line of hormone-free, milk- or grain-fed veal, landed in grocery stores just before COVID-19 hit and restaurants closed. With more people cooking at home during the pandemic, Famille Fontaine veal is flying off shelves.

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After working in finance for over a decade, Shaun Hauser became disillusioned with banks that seemed too focused on upselling products that their customers didn’t need. So, in 2017, the seasoned financial adviser co-launched Wellington-Altus Private Wealth (WAPW) with the vision of providing the best possible advice to clients while ditching traditional cumbersome processes like in-person meetings just to sign paperwork. “We knew that what was common practice at the time wasn’t working for most clients,” says Hauser. “So we changed it.”

Starting a brand new firm wasn’t easy, but Hauser, along with his co-founders, Charlie Spiring, Todd Degelman and Blaine Coates, bet on WAPW’s in-house data architects and analysts, known as the Wellington-Altus Labs, to help it stand apart. The Labs are focused on creating innovative digital tools, such as an intelligent advisory platform and data lake that lets WAPW’s 400-plus employees share data on demand, and an in-development digital foundation that will use predictive analysis, data-driven workflows and machine learning to help narrow down the best product options for clients.

“What we find is that the best client experience is when our financial planners give clients a conscious choice in what to do,” says Hauser. “It’s our job as wealth managers to continually plug back in and ask what’s going on and how we can help.”

The private firm’s tech advancements have paid off: in 2020, it saw its total assets rise to more than $15 billion (with approximately $5 billion of that from that year alone). While it’s not lost on Hauser that the pandemic has been devastating for many startups across the country, he says the disruption has helped WAPW showcase its offerings and in some cases outmanoeuvre the competition that relied on face-to-face appointments to engage with clients. In fact, the very same tools WAPW put in place years ago — such as its intranet, which enables employees to connect and collaborate in real time from anywhere in the world via their phone or laptop — were later adopted by many of its competitors during the height of the pandemic.

“When you’re an entrepreneur you have to train yourself to see silver linings,” says Hauser. “COVID was a dark cloud, and it turns out the silver lining was stronger than the dark cloud, because our business took off and employees who were disenfranchised at bigger companies because of their lack of action came to work with us.” Now his company has 400 employees across the country, and it’s expected to continue to grow its workforce in the coming year.

“We were able to bring on advisers and clients when no one could get on airplanes or meet in person,” says Hauser. “That created a better reputation for us that precedes us walking through any door.”

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Textile company Duvaltex pivoted into pandemic mode early on. It not only developed new, reusable materials that are key to the fabrication of medical gowns, it also figured out the channels to distribute them. In less than six months, the company’s medical-textiles division produced and sold enough material to create more than two million medical gowns.

Duvaltex has a history of developing products to address emerging needs. The Quebec City-based company facilitates this agility through front-end innovation — a collaborative product-development process that involves teams from marketing, R&D, commercialization, finance and operations — and edge innovation, which encourages its staff of engineers to develop products with awareness of worldwide trends, like robotization and AI.

“Duvaltex has been able to evolve and adapt constantly through its dedicated focus on its customers,” says Alain Duval, the company’s president and CEO. “Our people are continually learning new skills in order to adapt and create relevant solutions to our customers’ major problems and pains.”

In 2016, Duvaltex became the largest manufacturer of commercial and contract interior fabrics in the United States and Canada — serving offices, institutions and the health-care and hospitality industries — when, in addition to its house brand, Victor, it acquired fabric company True Textiles and its brands, True, Teknit and Guilford of Maine.

What makes it stand apart today is its sheer size. Duvaltex has 550 employees, six textile mills in Canada in the U.S., two Quebec-based plants for Artofix, its soundscape-solution-design subsidiary, and a sales and design office in New York.

Another differentiator is its commitment to sustainability, which began with Duval’s grandfather, William Duval, who founded Victor in 1947.

“[By the 1970s], our company was specializing in the recycling of woollen scraps into high-quality fabrics for outdoor apparel,” says Duval. “We were the largest maker of recycled wool in North America. My grandfather taught our family great lessons about the use of resources, and this was very instructive throughout our evolution. Innovation and resource optimization are central principles of our vision.”

Since 2000, more than 100 million yards of sustainable post-consumer fabric has been produced in Duvaltex mills in Canada and the U.S. In Quebec, 92.8 per cent of the energy used by the company’s mills is from a renewable source (hydroelectricity), and nearly all of its waste from the manufacturing processes is recycled.

In its latest efforts, Duvaltex partnered with Seaqual Initiative, a network of companies working to help clean the oceans, to create a new product: an upholstery called “Intersection,” which it co-developed with office-furniture company Steelcase. The material, made of harvested marine plastic, falls under Duvaltex’s newest brand, Clean Impact Textiles, which is a result of the company’s front-end innovation system.

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“What makes BioScript different is our focus on the patient,” says managing director Heather Tulk. BioScript is a provider of fullservice specialty-care solutions for the distribution and provision of complex drug therapies — and, according to Tulk, the team takes that responsibility very seriously. “We have the privilege and the obligation of interacting with people at some very difficult times in their lives,” she says.

Founded by pharmacists David Ford and Andrew Steeves in 2001, BioScript started with a single patient who was receiving treatment at a local hospital through a trial that was about to end. The patient still needed infusions, but there was nowhere else in the community to receive them. So Ford set up an infusion clinic at his Coverdale Road pharmacy in Riverview, N.B. Steeves joined him and the two opened more clinics throughout Atlantic Canada.

Now, the privately operated company has a team of over 800 staff managing more than 100 Coverdale Clinics and 13 BioScript Pharmacies nationwide, with services including the administering of specialty medications, specialty testing and dedicated case management. This past fall, the company expanded into third-party logistics, providing global manufacturers with a single partner for importing and distributing pharmaceuticals in Canada.

“As various new treatments and drug modalities have evolved in Canada, there’s often been a need for someone to fill the gap of providing services that go along with them,” says Tulk, who joined BioScript in September 2020. “We’re driven by simplifying access to specialty care.”

One key part of that simplification process has been BioScript’s NavieGo patient-support program, in which a team of coordinators connects with patients as soon as they’ve been enrolled by their prescribers. “It’s in the DNA of the company,” says Tulk. “I’m proud to share the story that our founders really didn’t set out with the intention of building a big company but of helping patients. Twenty years later, that’s still why every one of our team members gets out of bed every morning.”

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If you’ve never heard of a fire pump controller, don’t worry — you’re in the majority on this one. It’s a key part of a building’s sprinkler system that ensures the right amount of pressure so that there is always a consistent flow of water in the event of a fire. “It’s a really niche market,” says Dominic Bergeron, co-president and chief operating officer of Groupe Tornatech, which designs and manufactures these control panels and exports them to more than 80 countries.

Founded in 1985 by Bruno Goupil (Bergeron’s father-in-law), Tornatech’s not-so-common offering means it has a competitive edge without even trying. Still, the company, based in Laval, Que., doesn’t mess around when it comes to customer service. “Everything we do is to make sure our customers are pleased,” says Bergeron. “We invested a lot of money in our ERP [enterprise resource planning] system so when we receive an order from a customer, whatever language it’s in, whatever option they select, everything is done automatically.” He goes on to note that Tornatech’s manuals and software are available in 36 languages. “We have international subsidiaries all over the world, and the reason we have them is to get near our markets with people who speak the language and understand the local challenges.”

Bergeron started at the company in 2005 in the customer service department. “It was a really good way to learn about the products and how to give customers the best experience,” he says. This was followed by positions in various departments, like production and operations, giving him a rounded education about the company. “I’ve been able to create my own path in the company, and this is why I never get bored,” he says. It’s likely a common sentiment at Tornatech given that most of the 300-plus staff have been with the company for at least 10 or 15 years, according to Bergeron.

Tornatech faced extra challenges when the pandemic started, but the team’s stress level went from moderate to code blue when it experienced an IT attack last May. Key aspects of the company’s operations were paralyzed for two weeks while it was forced to completely rebuild its system. “It was a tough time,” says Bergeron, “but it’s in tough times that you see how great your team is.” Through this upheaval, Tornatech kept in contact with its customers and managed to maintain good service. “Everything we’ve done has been made possible because we have really good people,” says Bergeron. “They’ll do whatever it takes to make our customers happy.”

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When Showcase founder Amin Jivraj opened his first store in Edmonton in 1994, he always made sure he had a notepad by the cash register to write down any new customer product requests. The store would fax this info to the head office, creating a daily hit list of items for the buyers to source and purchase. His number one goal? Give the customer what they want.

Almost three decades on, the “home of the hottest trends” has given millions of customers exactly what they want, from Tae Bo workout videos to Shopkins collectible toys — and surpassed $100 million in revenue doing it. “Today’s Showcase model is simply a modernized and tech-enabled version of that original intent,” says CEO Samir Kulkarni. The brand has 107 small, ultra-efficient, high-traffic stores in Canada and 10 in the U.S., with plans to open hundreds more locations featuring Showcase’s signature fun, interactive product demos. “Creativity and resourcefulness are recognized in company meetings, and individuals are celebrated for taking risks, finding creative solutions and adapting to new realities,” says Kulkarni.

And world-class logistics have enabled Showcase to bring must-have products to market faster than just about anybody else. Take one of 2020’s hottest trends, for example: “Hot-chocolate bombs are a viral sensation that Showcase translated from an idea to a $3-million product in 28 days.” When the bombs went viral on social media last October, Showcase jumped into action — Christmas was just around the corner, after all. “This handmade craft could not be produced in mass quantities without many months of investment in design and automation,” says Kulkarni, so they issued a “one million bomb open call to Canada’s bakeries, restaurants and hospitality companies, who have suffered greatly through the pandemic, to partner with Showcase to produce the bombs and supply our chain.” From there, they sourced equipment, supplies and ingredients — including 30 tons of chocolate — to support large-scale production and micromanaged daily deliveries from producers in order to be in stock in virtually all stores and online for Black Friday.

Bakers weren’t the only folks Showcase helped out during the pandemic. Both the founder and the CEO have medical-personnel family on the front lines, which “inspired us to direct the resources of the entire company toward helping secure for Canada its fair share of the global supply of PPE,” says Kulkarni. And, yet again, Showcase gave the customers what they wanted: it became a leading PPE retailer, selling 11 million units and $25 million worth of hand sanitizer, masks, face shields, pulse oximeters, antibacterial wipes and 150 other SKUs. “We are personally humbled that we could in some small way help the hard-working first responders and health professionals who make this country so great.”

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Curtis Braber’s enthusiasm for power machines is infectious. “I know not everyone finds them sexy, but I’ve done this my whole life, and I get excited about it,” he says. Now the owner of BE Power Equipment, Braber built his first pressure washer at 11 after his dad launched a sideline to complement the family agricultural-equipment business. “I would come in every day after school and build them one at a time with these little tools,” recalls Braber.

Founded in Abbotsford, B.C., by Braber’s father in 1991, BE Power Equipment (then called BE Pressure Supply) started out manufacturing industrial pressure washers but has since expanded to include three more product categories: air compressors, power generators and water pumps. Entirely by coincidence, that product set means they see a lot of activity when a natural disaster like a hurricane hits. “We’re there to help,” says Braber. “It starts with the generator when power is lost, the water pumps are brought in when the storm surge leads to flooding and then the pressure washers come in for the cleanup.”

Those pressure washers still account for half of the company’s production — with a model for every sort of would-be user. Many clients are on the industrial side, doing jobs like cleaning parking garages or washing down oil rigs in Alberta.

BE Power Equipment is one of the last independently owned manufacturers of its kind, which Braber says allows the company a level of flexibility not afforded to its multinational-conglomerate-owned competitors. “We’re nimble, and we can develop products quickly,” he says. “It also means we can adapt quickly to market changes.” Case in point: early in the pandemic, the team was able to convert one of its pressure washers into a mister for spraying an antiviral cleaning solution in settings like factories.

As it turned out, the pandemic was an unexpectedly good time to be in the pressure-washer business, thanks to people spending more time at home and sprucing up their yards. And while that meant sales were great — business is up 30 per cent — it also meant that BE Power Equipment had a responsibility to keep its supply chain intact (it exports to more than 30 countries and manufactures in four) while ensuring the team (300 globally, including 150 in the Abbotsford head office) stayed safe and healthy. That’s where the company’s strong collaborative culture came into play. “We thrive on engagement with each other,” says Braber, adding that the business has many long-term employees. “I may be the owner of the business, but I make it very comfortable to challenge me.”

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