Business View Magazine | Volume 9, Issue 3

125 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 3 agile operation while consistently focusing on innovation.” LOC International started in 1988 as a small operation solving the challenge hotels were facing when managing in-room minibars. “At the time, we came up with a straightforward solution to install a small plastic tag on each minibar,” explains Beaudet. “You had to break the seal and then use the key to access the minibar. The solution was called a Mini Loc, which is how our name LOC came into existence. Soon our founder, Richard Tanguay, started looking into other product lines like door locks and in-room safes, which it started distributing and eventually contracted a Chinese supplier to manufacture branded products.” In 2000, the company got into the hospitality key cards industry, which proved to be an extremely well-calculated move. “We were doing about 85 million cards a year,” says Beaudet, “which was completely unheard of for a company as small as ours.” The waves the small upstart was making soon caught the attention of the big players – and North America’s largest keycards player, that industry leader came knocking. Beaudet admits, “I guess we annoyed them, and in 2011, they bought our keycard division.” Because of a non-compete clause in the acquisition, and the card business accounting for a considerable chunk of the company’s overall business, the company leaned down and kept running. “We continued selling safes and fridges, and when the non-compete ended in 2018, we rebranded the company and added a bunch of new products to become a one-stop shop for in- room electronics,” Beaudet adds. Today, the company is a Canadian leader in the manufacturing and distribution of products for the hospitality industry. Its comprehensive list of in-room products includes door locks, keycards, compressor-less fridges, safes, TV, air conditioning, radio alarm clocks, in-room phones, LOC INTERNAT IONAL