By KELLY LOUISEIZE
With well over 30 years in the business world, Bill Boulton, president of Success Marketing and Sales has opened up his own company.
In his time as senior trade adviser for Northwest-Midwestern Alliance, adviser for Team Northern Ontario and national sales marketing manager with Norfab Building Components Ltd., Boulton has made numerous national and international contacts.
The company opened in March to provide small- and medium-sized manufacturers that have no sales agents or marketing staff an opportunity to utilize Boulton’s expertise.
“This part of the world needs help,” he says. “We are going to put the spark in it.”
He works predominantly on private contracts focusing marketing and sales initiatives in the United States and Canada, but is interested in testing the waters in Asia.
Boulton is selective in accepting contracts. He doesn’t make a dime if he cannot move the product, so research on the company’s financial health and product is essential.
Five northwestern Ontario companies have signed on with him.
“The goal is to help northwestern (companies) grow on the exporting and importing side of things,” he says.
One of those five operations is a small company called Wally Weights Inc.
Owner Aime Matail, a construction millwright worker in Kenora, started the company almost 17 years ago from a sketch while sitting at the kitchen table. He is the first to admit he is not a businessman, but an inventor. Matail received a patent almost 15 years ago for an environmentally friendly submersible water pump that sits firmly in the lake. Waterfront cottage and homeowners are able to access lake water by using this granite-plastic device.
Word of mouth was Matail’s only means of advertising and although it has worked well for him in the past, Boulton has decided to take the product a few steps further.
Matail gets royalties and Boulton gets a commission.
Local hardware stores have picked up the product. Boulton has met with administrators from large retail chains to see if it can be approved for all store chains. The word is that the company administrators want to build up critical mass in local stores before taking it on themselves, Matail says. If the product is accepted then manufacturing will take place in Winnipeg, Manitoba and London, Ontario.
It’s a lot of up front work, but Matial says “I have a lot of faith in him.”
Boulton has other sales representatives in British Columbia, Alberta and northwestern Ontario. He plans to hire in southern Ontario and the United States.
If for some reason a product does not move, Boulton and company managers will sit down and determine how they can further it down the marketing chain. It may mean Boulton has to connect them with key funding agencies or advisers. His years as a consultant for companies and agencies have provided a Rolodex full of potential contributors.
He says he is always on the look out for new companies with interesting product lines.
