Business View Magazine | October 2019

50 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2019 and other crops like vegetables. And while some of our competitors were sticking close to the area, we were spreading out and bringing in product of high-selling value, which was setting us apart. Maybe we didn’t win every deal, but we were having exclusive dealerships and distributorships for certain products and that panned out, because today they’re the only ones in business, due to their engineering and value. In the 1970s, the fuel industry was going crazy and we were bringing into the market diesel engines during the gas crisis, whereas maybe our competitors didn’t have that foresight. “Unfortunately, in 1979, my father passed away. He was only 49 and left behind my mom, four daughters, and me. I was only 17 and still in school. My mom, Theresa, became President of the company and we had a great General Manager in Brooke Sowden who’d been working with my dad since 1968. Luckily, he got us through the ‘80s. I left school and started here in 1980, so this is my 39th year. He watched me develop, mentored me in all the aspects of the company – through T LTD . assembly, shipping, service, sales, and eventually into sales management and general management. Today, I’m President and my kids have joined me in the company. My son came on five years ago, my daughter three years ago, and we’re all having lots of fun. They’re enjoying it – we’re here to stay.” Vanden Bussche Irrigation has 55 full-time employees, that goes to the mid-80s, seasonally, when university students, and sometimes semi- retired workers, are hired to help out. There are six Ontario locations: Milton, Burlington, Concord, Scarborough, Ottawa, and the largest, which is the head office, in Delhi. The majority of business comes from Ontario, some from eastern Canada, as well as international work in eastern Europe. The client base is split about 50/50 between agricultural, and turf and golf. But that varies – the last couple years, it’s been higher on the agricultural side. In Canada, even when the economy fell in 2008, agriculture/farming still carried on quite well. Marc recalls, “Through the 1980s until 1994 we did a lot of acquisitions; took the opportunities to take over other irrigation companies. We haven’t had those opportunities for the last few years, but it’s the best way to do it. I definitely like sliding in and buying everything from the forklift to the coffee pot, and even taking over the phone number. I see a lot of acquisitions happening in different industries, today, and that seems to be the way to go. We have lots of competitors, but none of them do the full spectrum of irrigation that we do. We would have a competitor that will sell one very large piece of mechanical equipment that we have out front – and we would compete one on one with them. We compete with another one on golf course equipment; another on greenhouse irrigation; another with drip irrigation in the fields. But we sell the whole gamut – we are a one-stop shop for all kinds of irrigation equipment. That is our business and we lead in each of those market segments.” Recently, what’s come on fast, and changed the agricultural industry in a big way, is hemp production and industrial cannabis. While medical cannabis has been legal in Canada for years,