Lloyd Sevack, President, P. Eng.
Montreal, Quebec
When my dad Ben Sevack founded Tripar in 1949 (yes, 75 years in business as of 2024!), as a small metal stamping shop, an undiscovered niche was components for the lighting industry.
At the time, this was largely for suspended lighting fixtures, for which there were many local lighting manufacturers, and virtually no offshore competition. Besides decorative metal stampings (such as fonts, bobeches, husks, leaves, cylinders, check rings, and lamp bases… for those that may still have such terms in their vernacular 😉), those same customers had a need for decorative tubular arms and crossbars, for their chandeliers and other popular fixtures. Tripar obliged investing in equipment to process;
- Small diameter ¼” – ½” tubing; cutting, beading, swaging, threading & bending
- Narrow galvanized coil to make crossbars
In the heyday of catering to these decorative lighting OEMs, Tripar made hundreds of thousands of tubular arms and tens of millions of crossbars.
Tubular product manufacturing – the downturn and exit
Fast forward to 2013, tastes changed, and most decorative fixture manufacturing shifted offshore; in part due to labour costs, but mostly because of plating. With plating often using harsh chemicals and tightening North American environmental controls, it pushed local platers either to incur the expense to comply, or to shut down. The result was such that most processing moved offshore…where harsh chemical effluents are still often dumped into water systems…sadly in the name of short-term profits.
This of course led to a reduced demand in Tubular manufacturing and crossbars, which to this day remain a necessary part of almost every suspended fixture, but whose simplicity reduced them to an ultra-low-cost commodity item.
With tubular product manufacturing representing disproportionately low sales in relation to the factory space it was using up, the choice was either to invest in modern, efficient and compact equipment (which still left the plating constraint) or get out of this business completely and invest and use the space for the core of Tripar’s expertise; metal stampings.
We choose the latter. However, I didn’t want to let our customers down and leave them in a bind. So I contacted one of our main Tubular product competitors, Contour Metal Products in Ontario, asking them if they’d be interested in taking over our share of the business. The answer was an obvious yes, at which point Tony, then President and owner asked me point blank “how much do you want for your customer list?” I told him nothing. He was shocked to say the least.
You see, my only interest and concern was not to let our customers down. And to ease their transition to a new and competent supplier as we wound this down; see letter here that we sent to all tubular product customers.
Crossbar manufacturing – our exit
The crossbar business was a similar story. Being a commodity item over time, with importer manufacturer’s selling prices often not much more than a nickel, it was time to exit that business too. Like the tubular business, in 2016 I approached David, then President of Etlin-Daniels to ensure a similar smooth customer transition from Tripar to them, and again at no cost to Etlin-Daniels.
So, why didn’t we monetize these business “exits”?
You may be asking yourself, why didn’t I try to monetize these exits? The answer is simple:
I wanted these new suppliers to seamlessly take over the supply of these items for OUR longstanding customers, with true appreciation and grace. In my mind, providing our customer list (limited to these product ranges) would increase the chances that such gratitude would spill over positively to our customers. And it sure did!
But most importantly because we believe all customers should be treated like friends; it’s in our DNA and the only way we do business. And that’s how we’ve managed to build such lasting relationships with our amazing clients (often ranging from 10 to 30 years).
Sincerely,
Lloyd
