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310 311 VALUE PARTNERS INVESTMENTS cer),” Filmon says. “There were two us at the start that drafted the business plan and we’ve been executing on it ever since.” It wasn’t long before they were joined by Steve Norton, now VPI’s Executive Vice President. He and Filmon had worked together previously at one of Canada’s largest mutual fund companies.  “Gregg left to start Value Partners and asked me to join him,” Norton recounts. “I lived in Toronto at the time and thought he was crazy to start a mu- tual fund company in an ultra-competitive indus- try - in Winnipeg, no less - unless we were going to do some things very differently. There were tons of investment companies and more mutual funds than actual stocks out there. So, we stepped back and asked, ‘Would we want to be a client of any of these businesses?’ The answer was ‘Yes,’ but there were things we wanted to change.” Chief among them was transparency, some- thing the VPI brain trust has worked very hard ever since to put front and center. “When you give money to an investment company, you want them to tell you what you own, why you own it, when you’ve made money and when you hav- en’t. The industry wasn’t doing that,” he explains. Value Partners immediately unbundled its mutu- al funds, alerting clients how many shares they owned in individual companies and what kinds of dividends they were being paid. That wasn’t particularly sexy - or marketable - in the beginning, but it slowly grew on people and it’s now a vital part of VPI’s DNA.  Most of the company’s more than 30 full-time employees work at the Winnipeg head office, while the rest work out of Toronto. In Winnipeg, they are joined by three to five co-op students 204.219.8838 | SHERPAMARKETING.COM With a staff of over 30 seasoned experts, we have the right people and the right tools for your next marketing challenge. You need the whole package. With so much at stake, your marketing campaigns must be impactful, cost-efficient, and have measurable results. Do you have the time and in house talent to invest in hitting all those marks? If the idea of fiddling with Photoshop while trying to make sense of your website analytics makes your blood pressure rise, you’re not alone. We’re Sherpa Marketing. We’ve been delivering excellent marketing services for over 20 years, and we’re equipped to handle marketing challenges of any size. With cutting edge strategy and consulting services, world-class graphic designers, on-trend videography and photography services, passionate digital and traditional marketing specialists and an expe- rienced team of application developers and Augmented Reality programmers, we’re like an expansion pack for your marketing department. But there’s more in the box. We don’t just produce great campaigns, we also follow up with reports to measure campaign success. No matter how big or small the campaign, we take it upon ourselves to make sure we’re delivering the right message, to the right people, at the right time – driving the right results. If you’re shopping for a new marketing agency, visit our website at sherpamarketing.ca We’ve got lots more in store.