Crafting bespoke carbon-fibre wheelchairs might not be front of mind for many people when it comes to forging a career in manufacturing, but for Eric Simoneau, it was exactly the niche he needed to make his mark.
The motivation was simple. He wanted to start a company. He teamed up with university friend David Gingras and they considered their options. Coming across carbon fibre, the pair were impressed with its strong but lightweight characteristics. After looking at products that could be improved, they decided it could have a broad impact on wheelchair design.
The Apex lightweight, carbon-fibre wheelchair. Motion Composites has expanded its range of wheelchairs to six models, selling for between $3,000 and $4,000 apiece. (Christian Blais)
“Our initial mission was that seniors pushing [around] 45-pound wheelchairs made no sense, so our vision was really to use the technology to improve people’s lives,” he says.
Mr. Simoneau and Mr. Gingras founded Montreal-based Motion Composites in 2005, and three years later they sold their first carbon-fibre wheelchair, the Helio C1, the lightest folding wheelchair available at the time.
The company has grown from its original three employees – which included the two founders – to more than 100, while the wheelchair range has expanded to six models, selling for between $3,000 and $4,000 apiece. Mr. Simoneau expects to sell 8,000 to 9,000 chairs by the end of this year.
The uniqueness of the product certainly gives Motion Composites an advantage in the market.
“In the beginning since we were making carbon-fibre wheelchairs we were the only ones and we’re still pretty much the only one in North America to build carbon-fibre wheelchairs,” he says.
Three years ago Mr. Simoneau set a goal for Motion Composites to become the biggest wheelchair manufacturer in Canada, and now he confidently states that he “beat the timeline by a few years.”
Moving into the United States, which comprises about 15 per cent of the company’s business, as well as Germany, Motion Composites has pursued aggressive growth at every turn. Speed of delivery is key to that growth, and after moving to a new manufacturing facility on the outskirts of Montreal four months ago, that process has been turned from something that started out as a 10-day timeline to under 48 hours.
“Before moving we spent maybe a year redesigning how we manufacture the chair,” Mr. Simoneau says. “We changed several things, the flow of parts within the factory and also the way we build the chair.”
Motion Composites is focused on constant innovation, it says, putting a lot of resources into research and development. Mr. Simoneau says the company gets good support from government to push forward on its innovations.
While the company strives to bring the best products to its customers, such as the lightest folding wheelchair in the world and the lightest rigid wheelchair in the world (for more active and sports-oriented users), it remains committed to customer needs.
“I can talk about growing, becoming No. 1, but in the end it’s really [about] bringing pertinent products to the market,” Mr. Simoneau explains.
Continuing to innovate should ensure that the future of Motion Composites is strong.
Ken Wong, a faculty member at Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, says the specialty manufacturing sector in which Motion Composites operates gives it a built-in advantage. While manufacturing at a basic commodity level can be a recipe for disaster, partly because companies aren’t going to be able to compete with low labour rates overseas, bespoke manufacturing such as carbon-fibre wheelchairs is a specialty area.
“If you’re into the customized, higher-end products that require a certain level of craft, high level of technical knowledge and perhaps access to specialty materials that can’t be mass produced, you’re not going to find a lot of people in less-developed nations with that skill set and so you’re relatively safe,” he says.
However, Mr. Wong says a company which manufactures premium products still needs to ensure that it charges a premium price. He calls the notion of cutting price and making it back with volume “a myth.”
Every time a company cuts price by 1 per cent, it has to build volume by 3 per cent just to break even, he adds. It must also consider that by cutting the price it puts pressure on profit margins, which can lead a company to cut costs. On top of that, as a company cuts costs, it may lose the distinctive thing that made the product a premium one in the first place.
For Motion Composites, Mr. Wong draws a comparison with Canada Goose Inc. As a Canadian manufacturer of high-end luxury outerwear with a ticket price to match, Canada Goose clothing can continue to be manufactured in Winnipeg and be competitive.
“If on the other hand it’s fibre-filled, low-end coats,” Mr. Wong says, “it’s going to be pretty hard to compete against what can be sourced from China and the Far East.”
When it comes to Motion Composites and its line of carbon-fibre wheelchairs, Mr. Wong says it is the uniqueness of the product that should allow the company to stand the test of time and compete against other wheelchair manufacturers.
“It always comes down to the same thing,” he says. “If you want to compete against someone bigger than you, you better not be selling the same thing they do.”
Motion Composites hasn’t spent millions on marketing itself and relies on word of mouth and user experience to build awareness of its products. And while that user experience is vital for people considering buying a new wheelchair, for Mr. Simoneau it also plays an important role in how he views his business.
As he says, when a company is investing a million dollars to engineer a new wheelchair it’s very easy to go with the newest technology fad, forgetting that in the end, someone else is going to be using it.
“Whatever you engineer or design or manufacture, make sure that your users are involved in that process and that you design for them, not for your own ego or ideas,” he adds.