Business View Magazine | July 2019

223 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 Rossa, himself, came to MD Charlton by a rather circuitous route. He began in the photocopying business on Vancouver Island, where MDC, as he calls it, is home-based. “We were the distributor for Ricoh, Toshiba, and Friden-Neopost postage and mailing equipment,” he says. “I sold that business in 1995, and then at the age of 34, I was able to semi-retire. About that time, I was doing a lot of trading in the stock market and I had a couple of other companies, and I started to become a dealer and salesman for a company that did currency exchange. My brother was a staff sergeant for the RCMP, and he suggested I reach out to MDC. So, I started doing a lot of money exchange for the company. At that time, MDC had about 15 employees, three brick-and-mortar buildings, and was doing about $4 million a year in revenue.” “Fast forward to this point and MD Charlton has become the largest equipment distributor in Canada,” Rossa continues. “Our head office is in Victoria, British Columbia; we have a retail store in Langley, BC. We also have two main warehouses – our main one, a 15,000-square-foot facility is in Mississauga, Ontario. Two years ago, I established another warehouse, next door to here, which is a 6,000-square-foot facility. We also created an office in Ottawa for the head office of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police and for the military. We work with the Canadian Special forces on unique requirements. We’re the exclusive distributor for a group of the Sig Sauer family of products, which includes Mauser, Swiss Arms, JP Sauer, Sig Sauer optics, and suppressors. We’re also the trainers to the trainer; we facilitate training to the police departments and military in pepper spray, Taser, use of force, handcuffing, and less- lethal chemical munitions. So, coast to coast, we have 60 employees; we have 27 inside and outside sales people.” According to Rossa, eighty percent of MDC’s products come from the United States, 15 percent comes from Europe, and the other five percent THE MD CHARLTON COMPANY LTD . Law Enforcement & Military Equipment Distributors