LOC International

6 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 3 LOC INTERNAT IONAL While the company has its operations purring smoothly, one area it has had to adapt is the massive change in the hospitality business landscape. Beaudet acknowledges, “During a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, business travelers are no more, so business hotels are shutting down. At the same time, smaller hotels, bed and breakfasts, and the like are thriving because of local tourism. We are now going after those guys as our primary target market.” Another vertical the company is actively pursuing is the cruise ship market, which has grown as people turn to it as an alternative way of traveling for leisure. “In 2020, we signed a Working with an overseas manufacturer is not without its challenges, especially with supply disruptions occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, Beaudet says their culture of operating as a lean company worked to their advantage even while larger companies were struggling. “We’ve always worked with one or two containers at a time, which made it easy to get our inventory on time,” he explains. “In contrast, one of our suppliers, a large Canadian manufacturer that brings in hundreds of containers, was stuck because overseas suppliers were splitting consignments sometimes into 50 batches on different ships, causing a logistical nightmare.”