Business View Oceania | December 2019

105 106 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA DECEMBER 2019 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA DECEMBER 2019 and its prospects. “My former partner bought a small existing company called Unistrut Central Canada in May 1995,” Hughes begins. “I joined him in June as the first hired employee who didn’t come with purchase of the business, in order to get the company started and move it to its present location on Sandy Beach Road in Pickering. When Alan May bought the business, we dropped the word ‘Canada,’ so the name became simply Unistrut Central. When we first started the company, all we sold was Unistrut Metal Framing, that being electrical and mechanical support products used by contractors and OEMs for different types of supports and frame building. Soon after, we expanded the business into different product lines, and operated as Unistrut Central for the first eleven and a half years of business.” “In early 1997, Alan had a heart attack and didn’t come in to work for quite some time,” Hughes continues. “When he came back in May, he offered to open up 10 percent of the business by the end of the year for those of us who wanted to buy in. Three of us showed interest, including myself, who at the time was only 24 years old. Alan replied that by autumn, he would investigate how to open up 10 percent of the shares for the three of us interested. Unfortunately, only a few weeks later, my father passed away suddenly. He was a hard- working, blue-collar steamfitter and didn’t have a great deal of money, but he did leave me a small inheritance. In the autumn of 1997, I approached Alan and took him out for lunch. I said, ‘I don’t know how much the shares are going to cost, and I don’t know what you’re thinking, but this is how much money I have and I will give you every penny; how much can I buy?’ At only 25 years old, I handed over my entire inheritance from my father and bought 15 percent of the business. In February 1998, I became Vice President and General Manager of Unistrut Central. Soon after this occurred, Alan came down with another illness, from which he eventually recovered, but he never did come back to work, allowing me to essentially run the business from that point onwards. “We started to grow. In 1998, we turned our first year of profit. We operated under the name Unistrut Central until late 2005. We had gained many new product lines and been quite successful up until that point, but then had a situation whereby one of our suppliers did an ‘end run’ around us and sold directly to the end user, causing us to lose a three-year contract. We realised that as a company with the name of our main supplier as our own, we were vulnerable. If Unistrut Corporation ever decided to pull their line from us, we would have a problem with our name being Unistrut Central. In addition, we were now selling so many different product lines that we were constantly hearing the statement ‘I didn’t know Unistrut did this’. We would always reply, ‘Well they don’t, but we do.’ It became clear to us that it was the right time to change our name UCC INDUSTR I ES INTERNAT IONAL pictured left President and CEO, Brent Hughes pictured right V ice President, Cid Connon