A CONVERSATION WITH MATHIEU AND MARIANNE MOISAN

Why don’t we start by getting straight on your ages and your exact job titles?

MATHIEU I’m director of sales and materials purchasing and I’m 29. My tasks on the materials side are more making sure I’m following up with my clerks and my vendors, ensuring that pricing is at par with other hardware stores, and all purchasing of materials. It’s up to me to purchase all that. Also special orders, like doors and windows. But not hardware. Hardware inventory, it’s my dad who takes care of that.

MARIANNE And I’m director of operations and comptroller. I’m 34. As comptroller I analyze everything financial, everything connected to accounting, and I supervise the accounting team. I also look after everything operations-related, everything that encompasses the management of a business. I head up that section.

Your grandparents, Paulin Moisan and Thérèse Dion, founded the business in 1961. Can you describe what they were like as people?

MARIANNE Paulin was really someone oriented toward human relations, really someone who prioritized connections with vendors and customers—he was the one in contact with them. Thérèse was really about the numbers, the Cartesian accounting. It’s funny because we’re really two people who are similar to our grandparents: Mathieu is Paulin and I’m Thérèse.

MATHIEU My father, Bernard, is still with the business. He became an employee two years ago when we bought it back. He is purchasing director for hardware. But Marianne’s father (François) is no longer with the business as of two years ago.

You both knew from a young age that you wanted to join the family business, is that right? How young are we talking?

MATHIEU Yes, we both started working here very young, around 13, 14 years old. But as for being sure of ourselves, that we wanted to take over the business eventually, we would have been closer to 19. But yes, we both first started around 13, 14.

And you were able to do your homework, finish high school, while working in the hardware store?

MATHIEU Yes, we were able to do our homework at home before going to work, but we only worked evenings or weekends. You know, we were still in school full-time.

And there was a rule in your family, that owners from a new generation would have to spend some time working in outside businesses. Mathieu, I believe you were a construction estimator?

MATHIEU Yes, I did an internship for around, I think, two months. It was with one of our clients, I did that placement and it really clarified for me that my place was in the hardware store.

And Marianne, you were a comptroller at an aeronautics firm?

MARIANNE Yes, I worked for nine, almost 10 years, for an aviation company called Ortie Aviation. It’s based here in the Quebec City area and basically what we did was rent military planes for training. We had a contract with the American armed forces.

When I finished there, I went on to do my internship for my CPA certification, because you need two years of internship. And of course my parents didn’t want it to be at the hardware store. So I left precisely to look elsewhere to follow the family rule. Initially, I left for two years, with a view to returning to the business. In the end, I was gone for nine, but I always knew I wanted to take over the family business.

So how is it, sharing responsibilities between the two of you?

MATHIEU It almost happens by itself, given that we both have our strengths and weaknesses. So Marianne is really more on the finance side, procedures, employee relations, and all that. Then I’m more on

MATHIEU We still have the same vision, the same mentality. That helps everything to go well.

If you were brother and sister, you would probably have more conflicts ...

BOTH Oh yes!

... but as cousins it’s a bit different. MARIANNE For sure that has an effect, being cousins.

MATHIEU The relationship is a little less close but it’s perfect.

Close enough to work together.

MARIANNE Yes, yes.

You were a winner of our Young Retailer of the Year award. I imagine that weaves a link between the the side of purchasing, supplier relations, everything logistics, deliveries, coordinating always having the right stock at the right moment and the right price. That’s more on my side, but not always. Marianne can help me with large purchases. industry and the younger generation of leadership. In your opinion, how is your generation going to improve retail commerce in Canada, whether it’s at the level of tech or communication?

MARIANNE Because, you know, ours is really a generation that’s at ease with all that, with technology. We want things to be fast and frequent. So we like to be able to control things, which makes anything that’s selfserve suited to the new generation.

MATHIEU The new generation is much more informed too. Often the customer arrives in the store and sometimes they know the product better than we do. So that’s why self-serve orders are going to get more and more popular as customers arrive in store, and they almost won’t even need our advice anymore.

MARIANNE They’ll have looked at it themselves on YouTube or something like that. They’ll get here and know what they need.

You have a high opinion of BMR. Why is it the best group for you and how did your store come to join BMR? Your grandparents didn’t start with them over 60 years ago.

MARIANNE No, it was independent. It was called Matériaux de Construction Enregistré. But it was supplied by SodiscoHowden at that time. Then it became Novico.

Do you ever have disagreements, differences of perspective? Do you have someone else who can help you solve them?

MARIANNE Basically, we have a board of directors, which is me and Mathieu, but we also have an external consultant, François, who was the managing director and one of the second generation [of the family in the business], who we kept on as an external consultant.

MATHIEU Well, I think it’s really going to get better. We see it already with all the advertising, social networking, online promotions, online sales …

MARIANNE … self-service [at checkout].

MATHIEU We don’t have it yet but we’ve already talked about it. Eventually, when we’re able to, it will for sure be present in our stores.

MATHIEU Also Unitotal.

MARIANNE Then there was Pro.

MATHIEU We were Pro, Ace …

MARIANNE [In 2016] BMR was ready to welcome us, so we changed to their banner. It’ll be five years this fall that we’ve been with them. We were perfect for their model because it’s smaller stores, independent merchants. With the proximity to the customer and the proximity we had to BMR’s leadership–it’s all of that, the values that are similar to ours. That’s why we made the decision to join BMR. There’s a business model for the independent that really connected with us.