Tuesday, September 12th, 2023
Lift Off – CanLift achieves steady growth in southern Ontario.
When Ryan Fitzgibbon and Johnny Dragicevic were hanging out as teens, the last thing they might have imagined was that they’d co-found an extremely successful rental business with Johnny’s younger brother, Marko, some years down the road.
It’s been a smooth ride, though a lot of hard work of course and not without risk. But from the start, the biggest challenge these partners have had to face is how to handle the growth of their firm, CanLift Equipment in Burlington, Ont.
You could say Marko’s career choice was what led the three to co-found CanLift in 2009 (with a fourth partner, Jacob Fuller). Marko was working as a mechanic and operations manager at a smaller independent rental firm focused mostly on lifts. Johnny was also helping out with sales and operations while working on his career in real estate. Johnny reached out to Jacob and Ryan (who were business partners in an online marketing company) to do some on-line lead generation when the majority of rental companies were still relying on traditional print advertising to attract new customers.
Somewhere around 2008, Marko and Johnny had decided to purchase a few lifts of their own, having established an arrangement with the rental firm owner to share rental profits from this equipment. But when the downturn of 2008 hit, they were eventually downsized from their roles. By spring of 2009, the four friends decided to capitalize on their collective knowledge one evening sitting in Johnny’s backyard, laying the groundwork for a rental firm of their own.
“There was a lot of equipment available on the market due to the crash, and we bought a few dozen lifts from various places,” Johnny explains. “It was a really great opportunity to build a fleet at a low cost.” And so, CanLift Equipment was born.
They then found a small building to rent in Oakville to house their operations, shared with a contractor customer. Johnny and Marko were full time with day-to-day operations while Ryan and Jacob worked to launch the business with a website and other marketing tools. In less than a year, they’d outgrown their building, found a new one-acre site with a 10,000-square-foot building on it and moved in. They also started to hire more staff for serving customers and delivery.
But again, they rapidly outgrew their location. As luck would have it, the same person they were renting from had another, larger, property to rent in nearby Burlington, with a 24,000-square-foot shop on 2.3 acres. It became home for the next few years – but again, they grew. In 2017, the partners purchased land and built a new building of roughly the same size but on 3.6 acres. They now have 900 pieces of aerial work platform equipment in their fleet, and more on order.
Their secret to success has been simple: Hard work and an incredible staff, dedicated to unparalleled customer service.
Using time wisely
The new building at the present location was officially opened in February 2020, just in time for implementation of lockdowns related to COVID-19. “It was scary,” says Ryan, “but we used our time to dive into all of our procedures. We looked at how we could do things differently, how we could handle equipment more efficiently and, across the company, doing more with less.”
In retrospect, as for other firms, the lockdowns were a blessing in disguise. “It forced us to re-evaluate and streamline,” says Ryan. “We laid off staff at that point, but they were soon back as CanLift was declared essential.” Since then, business has been busier than ever, with the staff level increasing from 30 in 2020 to its present 45.
“Construction and manufacturing have been booming in the area since we started the business,” Johnny explains. “There’s lots happening: massive projects in electric vehicle manufacture, greenhouses, hospitals, warehouses. Our customers tell us they are booked solid for three years, so our forecast is great. Along the way, our salespeople have done a great job at growing the business organically, and Ryan has done a lot through online channels to accelerate our growth. And we’ve always had a reputation for being a Mom-and-Pop business that serves our Mom-and-Pop customers really well.”
Ryan adds, “Our customers want to be able to talk to the owner and that’s what we give them. When people call, they get another human being. It sets us apart from the corporate firms.”
But do Johnny and Marko take equal turns fielding equipment-related calls after hours or on Sundays? “Well, Marko is seven years younger than me and Ryan, so he has to take more of the calls and show respect for his elders,” laughs Johnny.
