Learning Mandarin is just one of the many ways that Carlo De Masi shows his devotion and implication in all aspects of the company, in particular, the decision to treat everyone, whether employee or contract, with the respect and honour they are due. Each and every person involved is as important as the next. At Prolex, the small company gets the same treatment as the multi-million dollar contract.

With 600 active customers, ranging in size from little start-up operations in someone's garage to companies as large as Bombardier, Prolex manufactures everything from connectors to components to whatever is electronically driven; they can service it all. “A customer will come to us and say, 'Listen, I've got a new computer product that I need to have manufactured. Can you help me out?' And we'll produce the PC board, the metal casing, put it all together for him and give it what you call 'turnkey production,' where he just gives you a blueprint and a list of materials and you produce the entire unit for him, in a box, ready to go on the shelves of the store or shipped directly to his customers.”

Nearly 40 years ago, father, owner, and president, Mike De Masi, saw a need in the Canadian marketplace for a company that would be able to service the small to middle-size people, and he went for it, branched out on his own, and created, first, Prolex, and then IGG Electronics. “When companies become a certain size, they are less likely to deal with customers who are asking for 100 parts, or 50 pieces of something,or 100-dollar orders... ” says son, Carlos De Masi. “They are more likely to ask for minimum order quantities. A company that's into millions of dollars of sales...and that is multi-national and is a global company is not going to want to fill an order for 50 parts to a local guy in Vaudreuil here who's developing something, which one day could be really cool, like Boomerang, the car security company. They were a local start-up. Everybody's got a Blackberry in the world, right? That was a little start-up company in Ottawa.”

A proud milestone recently, Prolex contributed the cabling and connectors for the new LED (Light Emitting Diode) traffic lights. But Di Mai's proudest accomplishment remains watching the company grow every day. “Hiring more people, employing more people, being a bigger contributor to the economy. That's the pride I get.”

No individual project stands out as supreme for De Masi. It would lessen their commitment to the little guys, he says. To De Masi, each project retains as much value as the one before and after. “It's not like when there's a big project everybody drops everything and celebrates. We have to focus on each and every one. That's the reason my father started this business...so he's hammered that message home. We treat every customer the same. When we're in front of a customer, regardless of whether he's asking for 10 parts or a million parts...to him, because he is putting the life of his company in our hands. Every single customer no matter how big or how small has to be treated with the same level of importance.

“You never know when they're going to grow. We've seen it time and again; customers that are 1000 dollars a year to us, all of a sudden explode because they're onto a really good idea. And we were there when they were small. Generally speaking, they keep us around when they grow. Business shouldn't be more complicated than providing a responsible service to a customer who is kind enough to give you his time.”

At the rate they're going, De Masi expects Prolex to grow dramatically. Twenty years ago, they were strictly doing connectors. “As the market changed, we changed with it. We started doing what you call 'value added.' We went from connectors to cable assemblies which have connectors on them. From there we went to custom molds... So we've grown. Recently, we acquired a company that has a 'proprietary touch technology,' which is competitive. There's only two or three companies in the world that have something like this cause there's only so many ways you can patent this principle, and we have one of these companies.

In spite of their recent acquisitions, the numerous new contracts and hirings, Prolex wants to keep things simple. They do not want to lose site of their original mission. They are trying to grow slowly and continue to do business here as well as abroad.

They feel fortunate to be able to manufacture in both Canada and China where they employ over 500 people. De Masi implicates himself fully in the business operations there as well as here and has taken it upon himself to pay tribute to his Chinese employees and their culture; he is studying Mandarin, having, to date, mastered the language insofar as to make simple sentences of gratitude, greetings and appreciation. Learning Mandarin will give De Masi, at the very least, an insight into the culture; He will gain additional respect for putting in the time to learn one of the most difficult languages around. Because the Chinese have worked very hard to learn his language, in order to do business with him, he feels he should at least do the same.

De Masi has put his devotion to the test and is giving the individual employee in China the same attention and time as the large company in Canada.