Many of our success stories have
come from our reps being knowledge-
able in both our products and their lo-
cal markets; knowing who the players
are and aligning with distributors and
fabricators that can benefit from GCP’s
products and services.
Additionally, our office in China
has been an integral part of our ability
to create and sustain long-term rela-
tionships with our vendor partners.
Navigating the business landscape in
China is not easy, and the GCP China
team has done an exceptional job of
this. It’s also benefitted us by giving
GCP a ‘24-hour workday’, which has
allowed us to provide a much faster
turnaround on customer inquiries.
GM:
I think it’s important to
mention our long-standing relation-
ship with China. We understand how
to fit their manufacturing expertise
with the market needs of North Amer-
ica and Europe. And it’s through these
supportive relationships in China that
we’ve been able to offer our customers
a risk-free product. Without their com-
mitment we simply wouldn’t be where
we are today. We’re even opening up
opportunities to buy and sell within
China because of the assistance we’ve
been able to receive. We see this as a
major emerging market for us: con-
tributing to the infrastructure in China
and growing the secondary manufac-
turing market.
On the whole, we want to raise
our entire network up if we can, and
as such, will continue listening to our
stakeholders in Canada, the U.S., Eu-
rope, and Asia. Because if we don’t
we’re not going to have much of a
business. Our mandate isn’t to add
15-20
new customers a year; it’s really
more about working with what we’ve
already set up and growing organi-
cally through avenues that make sense
for the network.
What’s your vision for the next
3-5
years?
GM:
By writing our goals and plan-
ning our future objectives, we’ve been
able to set forth a growth path, result-
ing in the honour of being named to
this year’s PROFIT 500 list.
We set both short- and long-term
objectives every year—everyone has a
part in this, it’s not just my input. Ev-
eryone comes here with a mindset that
they want to be part of something, and
the bigger the better. We always want
to serve our network, and of course
we’re excited about the potential our
marketplace holds as around two-
thirds of all enterprises sourcing in-
ternationally are in the manufacturing
sector. Our vision is to double the size
of GCP over the next five years.
NP:
GCP’s positioning statement
is to be a Catalyst for Growth. We feel
we are well situated for strong growth
in our core product segments (sheet
GCP
