Success is equilibrium between your personal life and your business, says Alain Gagnon of Boreal, a custom vision company founded in 2003. “To me success is an employee being happy... it's a balance. Setting a goal and being able to accomplish it; that's exciting...bringing new ideas...merging ideas to see if together you can do something better.”

Gagnon took parental leave and started Boreal. His perspective of the business world changed with the arrival of his second child. “I decided to integrate these elements into a company. Everybody that I hire has a family too. To me it's really important. I give them a flexible environment so they can meet their familial needs. What I've seen is that the effort I put into the company, they put into the company also. So I don't have to police them in terms of hours.”

Boreal specializes in inspection, building illumination for machines, working with automation to provide a way for a company to inspect their product with a tool. With ten years experience under his belt, Alain Gagnon decided to branch out and offer this product with the added twist; quantity would not be important and no project was undo able.“This is a wide industry. Several companies contribute to this, but we are building special illumination for that market. We found out that by customizing the illumination a little bit, we have better results. We work in partnership with our clients and come up with ideas, a new way of illumination.”

The key philosophy at Boreal is flexibility. They are open to adapting the product for each individual client. This is new to the market. In fact, many of Boreal's competitors have followed their model. But, says Gagnon, “If you don't build it from the ground up, it's hard to move towards something flexible. If you have a structure and you have employees that are working in a certain way, it's hard to change them. But we started like this. Our production is like that, our engineering is like that, and our way of seeing the product is like that. So, for us it's easy.”

“We're trying to be a team with our clients. It's a collaboration. What we see is they come back for business. They work with us in the first phase, they like what they see, they like the relationship, and then, I would say, 90% of our customers come back because they like the experience. It's something we believe in.”

When starting a new business you need help somewhere, be it financially...someone to buy a first contract, helpful colleagues. Everyone he's talked to who is successful, he says, had a little something extra that enabled them to advance and grow. For example, says Gagnon, “Aceris is my customer, and now I am renting them space. They have helped me a lot. I've helped them by giving them my product. We also benefit from them. They are flexible on the rent...I am able to negotiate with them.”

A group of twenty people working for the company, diversification, and the creation of another division focusing on different markets are the goals Boreal has set for the next five years. “Now, our main clients are machine integrators. They are in the vision machine market. They have all kinds of applications. We focus on them; we have a product that is dedicated to that market. But what we want to do is since we became very good at illumination with LED, which is going to be the next thing for replacing the lights, we want to be part of that new trend of illumination by LED. This is more efficient, better for the environment, less polluting. I see a good opportunity to separate the company.”

LED is a light source made with a semiconductor. Consequently, when it's a sound ball there is no mercury, no lead. This technology will become more efficient, will produce more light, will likely move to general illumination within the next two years, according to Gagnon. Boreal is currently looking into opening up an office in the United States and manufacturing in Asia.

The best advice the president of Boreal has received is not to need to be right the first time. “The most important thing, says Gagnon, “is making a decision. The idea is to make that decision and spin it in a way that you're going to reach your goal even if you made a bad decision. And that's really important, because if you don't make a decision, then you're stuck. You don't go anywhere.” Adjusting is key, adds Gagnon. “It's better to make a decision and then adjust. You have to be wise enough to adjust your decision if you see that it's not going to be successful.”