One thing that most successful business owners have in common is the courage to take a risk. This is something that Allain Ouellette understands very well. From his beginnings in car sales to his acquisition of what was a small custom glass business in 2004, Ouellette has understood the value of taking a chance. That small glass business is no longer small, by the way. Ouellette and his team, headquartered in Bathurst, New Brunswick, have transformed City Glass and Locks into a genuine entrepreneurial success story. Expanding to serve the entire province of New Brunswick, the business has grown at an average of 20 percent a year. A key to this growth has been diversification. Using his team’s expertise as a starting point, Ouellette has diversified the company’s offerings and grown the commercial side of the business. Today City Glass & Locks is a preferred sub-contractor to many construction companies and has doubled the number of employees to 14, with seven trucks on the road.

But it doesn’t stop there. Along with his wife, Annick, Ouellette has acquired a new furniture business, and has made ongoing efforts in community development. “I believe a lot in giving back to the community,” he says in conversation. And it shows: not only has his business been integral in school expansions and upgrades, but the entrepreneur remains dedicated to growing Bathurst and the surrounding area.

ECC’s Alex Willis spoke with Ouellette in July, 2010.

Alex Willis: What were your career aspirations when you were younger?

Allain Ouellette: Like every little boy, I had dreams of being successful. Honestly, I wanted to be a cop, or a firefighter. But as I got older and started to make my own money mowing lawns and cutting wood, I started to see the value of being an entrepreneur.

AW: What was your inspiration to get into the glass and locks business?

AO: A little bit of risk-taking and chance, I would say. I was in a career at a Chevrolet dealership, about six years in, very successful, and doing very well. The owner of City Glass and Locks was looking to retire. Never scared of a challenge, I hopped aboard, and bought the company. When I got here, I was the youngest person in the company. That ruffled some feathers. It was a challenging time, for me – I was 28 years old when I bought the company.

AW: What were some of those challenges? As you say, being 28, and picking up an established business – that can’t have been easy.

AO: Well the banks don’t give you much of a chance at 28 years old. That was a big challenge. Not many people have confidence in you either. They’re always looking for someone with many more years under their belt. What helped us on our side of things was that my wife, Annick, has her CA.

AW: That must certainly have helped with your credibility in managing numbers.

AO: Exactly. She had five years of experience with a major firm in town, so that helped us, certainly. But I am young and at that time I was, as you’d say in English, “full of piss and vinegar.” I was looking for a challenge. We had triplets a few years before we picked up the business, and with that in mind, we saw ourselves at a certain point in life where you need a change. You need to do something different. That’s a challenge in a town of 15,000 people. I’d reached the peak of where I was in the auto sales business, so there wasn’t much chance of improvement there.

The previous owner of City Glass and Locks took me in and treated me like a son. He took me in and gave me lots of guidance, which helped on the banking front, absolutely. They saw that he was behind me all the way. The two of us made it work.

AW: What do you think is the biggest challenge of being a New Brunswick-based business?

AO: The challenge for us, in the northern part of the province, is that every business around here has to be diversified. That’s hard on the employees, because you can’t just do one product line or service. For example, here at City Glass, we don’t just focus on commercial, although that is a big part of our business. We also do garage doors, residential work – we need all of these business areas to survive.

What this means is that, even in an economic downturn, we haven’t experienced the same hardships as other businesses, say in more economically specialized areas like down south, or even in Toronto. We’ve been 20 years in a problem economy here! We’ve been diversified from the beginning! The businesses around here have been stronger from the beginning as a result. So if we have a slow time in one area, another area will pick up. In our region we depend on forestry, mining, and fishing. Every year we have a problem with one of those sectors. We adapt when that happens. This has allowed us to expand. I now cover all of New Brunswick for our commercial work. I have guys in Edmunston, guys in Fredericton – we certainly have northern New Brunswick covered.

AW: Speaking of growth – reports show that your business has grown by leaps and bounds, about 20% per annum. What are your plans for expansion? Have you reached a saturation point, or do you have other ideas for where to take your business?

AO: When you’re successful, there’s always an impulse to grow a little bit more. But you have to be cautious. Growth takes a toll on everything – employees, cash flow, the whole nine yards. For the next few years, I think we’ve reached a saturation point, especially for what our employees are capable of doing. There’s always a chance that we can go beyond what we’ve done so far.

AW: City Glass and Locks has helped out a lot within the community. Can you tell me about the effort to help the local school, and about any other community projects you might be involved in?

AO: I’m part of the parent-teacher association in the community, have been for three years now. When I first got in, the plan within the association was to improve the school grounds of École Cité-de-l'Amitié – pretty much the biggest school in the region for kindergarten through grade 5. Our kids didn’t have much room to play in – it was tough. Our goal was to raise $100,000. We thought we could do miracles with that. We shortly realized that that wasn’t that much, all things considered. We ended up raising about $140,000. For me, I was able to get equipment through a lot of the companies I deal with, so that helped on costs and helped our money go further.

AW: A recent article in the Telegraph Journal mentioned that you and your wife are in the process of purchasing Tremblay Meubles. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

AO: This has been official since the end of April. We have finalized it, and my wife is currently running the operation. It’s a great furniture store. We’ve got a 12,000 sq. ft. building, and ten employees. So it’s nice to bring another payroll to the local economy.

AW: Bathurst is the home location for your business. With your success, do you have any plans to move your headquarters to a larger urban center?

AO: Bathurst seems like it’s in the north, but for distance, we’re actually quite well positioned. I’ve got great employees here, so I have no intentions to change our location. I’m pretty much just over three hours to any of the major centres, in any direction – Frederiction, Moncton, Saint John – so that’s convenient. And with two companies in the immediate area around Bathurst, we’ve got our hands quite full!

AW: Why do you think you won the Young Entrepreneur Award?

AO: To be honest, I was pretty surprised! [laughs] What the BDC told me was that they look at the growth of a company and its effect on the local economy. When I bought City Glass, it was generating about $200,000 in salaries in the local area. When I won the award, we were generating close to $500,000 in salaries in the local area. So we’ve practically doubled salaries and business.