By IAN ROSS
Pull into a Mr. Lube franchise somewhere in Canada and chances are there is a Sault Ste. Marie connection.
A small metal fabricating firm in the Batchewana First Nation's Blue Heron Industrial Park holds the exclusive contract to supply Canada's largest quick-oil-change vehicle service company with the aluminum awnings for all its present and future franchises for the next decade.
Bill Stevenson Industries has gone from making a few thousand dollars in revenues in each of the first couple of years to $600,000 during 2003, the third year of supplying 89 franchises across Canada.
Stevenson, a Mr. Lube franchise owner in Dartmouth, NS and Moncton, NB, saw the need for a consistent look among its franchises and created the small entity four years ago.
He acquired the contract to fabricate Mr. Lube awnings and picked out a central Canada location in the Blue Heron Industrial Park on the Rankin Reserve in the Sault, settling into a 5,000-square-foot shop in the Reserve's Blue Heron Industrial Park.
James Kent, who manages the small three-employee shop for Stevenson, met the East Coast entrepreneur in 1986 while on a construction job in Saskatchewan and later worked with him again on other contracting jobs in Vancouver. Kent, who has family connections in the Sault area, says the city was an easy choice to locate as a central point to ship products to franchises in Vancouver or Montreal.
"The cost of living here is low, the cost of the shop is incredibly low, Sault Ste. Marie has a trained labour force through Algoma Steel...and most of the suppliers are hungry for work," says Kent who grew up east of the Sault in Echo Bay.
With the help of a welder and a part-time labourer, they construct the aluminum frame trusses, hook up the electrical system and cover the 45-foot frame with a vinyl material called Cooley Brite, a laminated polyester fabric.
The company expects to produce 20 awnings this year at $10,000 a piece and Mr. Lube plans on expanding to 10 new stores a year for the next decade.
Stevenson Industries also picked up a structural steel contract from Mr. Lube, supplying catwalks and basement grates at $30,000 a piece, their bulk waste oil tanks at $20,000 each and the on-site piping at $15,000 to $20,000 per unit. Kent's brother Peter pitched in and opened up a nearby graphics business to do awning lettering and pocketed $60,000 in revenues last year.
