Bryan’s Remarks On Flō’s 25th Anniversary

While in Miami, I was talking to Mark Fowler, Chantal’s husband, and he didn’t know anyone from the Flō team. He had never met any of our folks, so I was looking around and saying, “Well, that’s so-and-so, and here’s what they do for the company.” I was explaining a little bit about and complimenting each person I spoke about and when I went through quite a few different people, I thought, “Wow! We have an incredible team!” It’s wild. We are so blessed to have the people we have at Flō.

Not too long after that, Eli made a comment that people are our greatest asset. Not only do I see it, but our team sees it – that people is what we’re all about. They are our greatest asset and I believe they are our greatest legacy. That all really stems from our belief that everybody is made in the image and likeness of God, and that’s the basis for honor. And it allows us to see that everyone is of infinite value. It also enables us to look at their skills and capabilities and how that person is wired. We get the privilege of understanding them and seeing where and how we can develop and grow them based on who they are and how they’re designed, and then place them so they can really soar and get into that special place God designed for them.

The value of family is huge at Flō, as well. We do life together. There’s an incredible openness. I think part of the way we back that, too, is with our prayer team. Chantal and the whole team continuously pray for our people, our projects, and our industry, and also our families, our marriage … really for whatever comes up.

The future is incredibly bright, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited than for what we have before us now. I think so much stems from one of our core beliefs, “A Better Way™.” This gives us a fresh vision. Believing there’s a better way in how we do our day to day, to the engineering applications we do, to the way we service our customers – it fuels that heart of innovation. Steve has been talking about how we need to aim big, which is what we talked about, too, in October when we were doing our strategy session, that we need to dare to dream again, that we’ve had many years of huge challenges, but now we’re in a new season. There’ve been really deep foundations, so we are dreaming big.

In 2023 alone, we increased by 25%. We’re going to double the business by 2026. At the same time, we’re now setting a 5X trajectory, a 500% growth trajectory. And we’re not just doing that with a wish and a hope. Part of that, too, is with Laura right now who handles our innovation pillar. We’re looking at three-, five- and ten-year innovation planning. And we’re really establishing a culture of innovation. We’re going to be investing in 2024, $2 million in people and in various ways to grow the business. One of our big beliefs is “we grow big people, and you get a big business.” So, Steve’s doubling down on the people side of the business with Glem and his team, along with Michael.

What I’m really excited about, too, are our OKRs (objectives and key results). I believe it’s an incredible collaborative goal setting process that’s going to leave us very much more focused and aligned and at the same time, agile. We are building incredible momentum, and this is just going to accentuate that even more as we build towards these goals and these lofty trajectories that we’re heading towards. Our whole past has been marked with innovation, right from the early 2000s with our first multi-path unit patent, on to the operational patents, the self-balancing patents, and our latest ones with low temperature heat pumps and one with dynamic heat transfer between HVAC and the racks. So, there’s a lot more to come on that front as well. And, really, when you look at our customers, just that relentless pursuit of value creation and adding value to our customers.

We’ve had Loblaw now for 25 years. We’ve had Aldi for more than 15 years. We’ve had Walmart Canada for more than 13 years. We’ve had Longo’s for about 16 or 17 years and Wegmans for more than 10 years. Although we have some hiccups there right now, but nothing we can’t get back on track. And, we’ve never really done marketing. We’re making a key investment in this area. We have a totally new website, and we’re building a really great calendar for 2024 and beyond so we can get into a regular cadence on the marketing front.

Generosity and impact is one of the areas we’re super passionate about, and we have been from the beginning. Bee Me Kids is a phenomenal organization that was birthed through Flō in terms of founding and financing it. To date, we’ve invested approximately $3 million into this effort, and now we have operations in four different cities, have more than 2,000 children and many parents, families and siblings involved, and we’re expanding across the province, and will go beyond there. The impact is massive. Every time I visit, it’s incredible to see what these disadvantaged children and their families have gone through and to see how their lives are transforming. M46 is another organization that was birthed from Flō, and it’s really helping to support families and individuals who have experienced tragedy. It’s a ministry of encouragement and hope, and now it’s really moving into a whole new realm of the Kingdom. We support and come alongside many other businesses, and we share what we have. In terms of support, sometimes it’s strategy, sometimes it’s just walking alongside, sometimes it’s financial. There are seven key cultural spheres of society, and it’s amazing how Flō, through all we’re doing, is actually touching all seven. And sometimes, too, we spend time or we dedicate prayer, and we have prayer teams that will rally around other companies and people that are in distress. We also sponsor many other organizations as well and come alongside them.

We know Matt is going to be talking here shortly on challenges and overcoming challenges and the storms of life. And that’s the one thing we’re guaranteed. We’re guaranteed trials and tribulations. You know what? Life is hard, and life will be hard. The Bible promises that. Back in 1998, I just had an idea, and then just the birthing of that into reality was years in the process of trying to get to something sustainable. I remember we started off the year with excitement and went through at least eight months with no revenue. Then, we had two months of revenue, multiple months without revenue, and just the ups and downs of a new business getting into that area of just sustainable finances and, yeah, there were times where we were walking a fine line. We talk about quality issues quite a bit, and we had quality issues beyond anything that we’ve witnessed as of late. Early in the business, in fact, our very first system we shipped was largely unbuilt. We had to build it onsite, and we ran it. Then, we had to rebuild it because of the massive site issues we had. We had some rough starts.

In 2003, our manufacturing partner went into bankruptcy protection, and we had all our inventory there. All of our parts were there. And at any time, that could have been locked up and closed down. We were walking a tightrope, but we got through that one thanks to AAON, who ended up purchasing that company. So then, AAON was building for us out of Canada and, in 2007, made a strategic decision to shift manufacturing to the United States into a much larger, more scalable facility. But in 2007, we only had business in Canada, and at that point, everything stopped. Loblaw purchased one of the largest companies in the nation, and they had to work through that. Then Sobeys purchased another one of the largest companies in the nation. That consolidation really paused all new construction, which was the core of our business. We went down to literally just a fraction of our normal revenue. But in that time, 2008 was an ultra-low revenue year, that was probably the hardest working year of my life, getting into shifting manufacturing facilities, whole new control systems and then the result of that were large scale issues. We had large scale, fleet-wide control issues where systems were going down. We’ve had issues in following years of fleet-wide motor failures across hundreds of systems. For Wegmans, for example, we had that massive heating failure.

Needless to say, we’ve been through a ton, and personally, when I bought the company from my partner in 2010, I was carrying millions in debt. I remember looking at my bank account with optimism, but also a hefty dose of fear. In the following years, we faced sabotage in the province of Quebec. We also had sabotage inside the company where people came in with pretty dark motives. So, we’ve faced a lot of stuff.

2018 really ended up being that perfect storm. Some outside investments came to a freeze, I had a personal, family tragedy, and it all kind of came to just a wild head. But during that time at the end of 2018, I decided to double down on investment in people. I started partnering with Glem in his business to really build a whole new talent strategy, to formulate a whole new cadence in the business. So that’s been a really robust five-year investment to where we are today. We’ve seen a transformed company. We’ve seen transformed people. Our leadership team is solid. Our business is poised for great growth. We’ve got phenomenal people. And we are now a strategically led company. So even with the innovation and great ideas, we are now operating with incredible consistency and continuity in our operations, which is very exciting.

Through all these trials and tests and tribulations, the bonds have only strengthened, and when we go through things together as one unit, as one family, those bonds strengthen. One of the things I have learned is that really, things don’t happen to us, they happen for us, and pretty much everything that looked like a disaster at one point ended up being a huge opportunity. Viktor Frankl, who survived the horrific concentration camps, gave a key determination that it’s not what happens to us, it’s how we respond to what happens to us. And quite often, that’s the only thing we have in our control, because all these outside factors we have no control over, but we can control how we respond. I’m so proud of and thankful for everyone. The future is exciting. We actually get to do this together. And I know we’re just getting started.

I just want to say a blessing over everyone. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord shine His face upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace. Blessings, everyone. Thank you.