Small Business Vital to Recovery • Small Busines Week Preview
Stealth Acoustical Employee
Colin Davison. All photos by She Was Stunning Photography.
Small Businesses
Vital to Recovery
Calgary’s entrepreneurial successes a key driver to growth of economy
C
olin Davison worked as an
employee for several years helping
to build an engineering company
up into one of North America’s largest
suppliers of exhaust silencers. Then the
entrepreneur gene kicked in.
Starting in about 2002, when governments across Canada began tightening
noise regulations for industry, he saw
the need for a nimble company that
could combine the engineering of noise
and pollution abatement products and
services with the manufacturing and
installation side of the business.
He learned the intricate details
about the emerging legislation, refined
his business plan along the way, and
on April 1, 2006, launched Stealth
Acoustical and Emission Control from
his basement with a single employee.
It was a huge gamble.
“I’m not a trust-fund baby,” says
Davison, founder and president of
By DeRek Sankey
Stealth. “I mortgaged my house to
the eyeballs to start this company. I
decided at that time I was young, single and might as well try to build a
better mousetrap.”
From his typical basement launch,
he grew to six employees by the end
of 2006. The following year, he moved
into a small building and by the end
of 2007 had 25 employees, forcing
him to move into a larger location.
Catering mainly to energy and utility
companies from his Calgary base, he
continued to build the company up to
about 60 employees before he landed
a dream contract.
Suncor hired his firm for its Firebag
project near Fort McMurray – a contract worth about $6 million. “It was
definitely a big feather in our cap to
get the project with Suncor,” he says. It
forced him to add another 40 workers
for that project alone. He grew from
small business to medium enterprise
in a matter of months, but generally
maintained staffing levels around 60
workers aside from occasional large
projects.
“I’m not a trust-fund baby,” says Davison, founder
and president of Stealth. “I mortgaged my house
to the eyeballs to start this company.”
– Colin Davison,
founder of Stealth Acoustical and Emission Control
114 • SEPTEMBER 2010 BUSINESS IN CALGARY
Small Business Vital to Recovery • Small Busines Week Preview
Colin Davison with CYBF Mentor Robin Sheerwood beside a stand-by power generation unit.
After just four years, the 35-year-old
says Stealth has had its best two first
quarters so far and expects to pull in
between $10 million to $14 million in
revenues in 2010 and plans to add more
workers to fuel what he describes as a
solid economic recovery in Calgary.
“We see the economy coming back
strong,” says Davison. “It’s not just people
talking about the economy in a feel-good
situation. Work and purchase orders are
actually flowing to the company.”
Small businesses are vital to the health
of Calgary’s economy and will play a
major role in the city’s economic recovery as it picks up strength, he says. It’s a
sentiment echoed by organizations such
as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business – long a proponent and
voice of the small business sector across
Canada.
They comprise about 97 per cent of
Calgary companies, and contribute significantly to employment, gross domestic
product and the overall economy, says
Janine Carmichael, spokeswoman for
the Canadian Federation of Independent
Business (CFIB).
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BUSINESS IN CALGARY SEPTEMBER 2010 • 115
Small Business Vital to Recovery • Small Busines Week Preview
Colin Davison with CYBF Mentor Robin Sheerwood.
Colin Davison with a Stealth Acoustical Employee inside
a computerized machine shop.
“It speaks to their role as a whole in
this economic recovery,” says Carmichael. “Yet there are a lot of policies
at city hall that are really difficult for
small business owners. There’s lots of
room for Calgary to improve.”
Despite trumpeting itself as a taxfriendly city, CFIB studies show the
municipal tax burned on small business is 4.5 times greater than the same
tax placed on the assessed value of
property. “There are lots of implications for the municipal government in
helping businesses get through to economic recovery,” says Carmichael.
“Small and medium businesses offer
very solid jobs for a lot of people out
there,” adds Davison. “When the markets pick up, the telltale sign is that we
don’t lose staff to our larger competitors
or to go to work in Fort McMurray.” He
has successfully competed head-to-head
with the likes of larger rivals, such as
Atco Noise Management, both in boom
times and during the recession.
“(Workers) like the quality of life a
smaller company offers because we
are flexible,” he says. “There’s a certain level of rigidity that’s required in
a very large company, otherwise you’ll
lose your shirt. Small companies will
lead to technological advances in
116 • SEPTEMBER 2010 BUSINESS IN CALGARY
industry and build and bring better
mousetraps to the market.”
Small businesses are innovators,
large employers of Canadian workers
and drive to the heart of Alberta’s economic prosperity. Long touting itself as
an entrepreneurial city, Davison says
that while large energy firms grab the
headlines, it’s really the small business
ventures that will power this province
into the future.
“Our staffing levels have picked up
quite a bit this year,” says Davison. “It’s
definitely a busier year. The market is
coming back strong. Things obviously
fluctuate with the larger companies
much more heavily with the ups and
downs of the markets. Small to medium
businesses offer very stable, very rewarding careers to a lot of people.”
They also contribute directly to the
province’s coffers and tend to take more
risks than larger corporations, which
must answer to their shareholders first
and foremost. “Our ability is much
greater to really interpret the needs of
the market and respond with new and
better technologies,” says Davison.
While the company has been focused
largely on noise abatement solutions,
Stealth intentionally included “emission control” as part of its name when
it was founded because Davison saw
the future opportunity for growth as
pollution and emission regulations
continue to tighten in coming years.
“We are a company that relies on
energy, but we are helping companies …
create better balance between our energy
requirements and the requirements to
grow our economy and provide stable
jobs for people, all with the environment
in mind,” says Davison.
Reining in spending at city hall is
one way to help fuel the prosperity of
the city’s economy, but it also needs
to do more to improve the business
climate for the small business sector.
“Holding the line on spending so that
taxes aren’t going up is one way to
keep that money with entrepreneurs
and allows them to create jobs,” says
Carmichael.
They’re also hugely integrated
into their communities. “The owners
who own these businesses are in the
same communities where they live, so
they’re the ones sponsoring the … soccer teams and all that stuff,” she adds.
“Their role is not just in creating economic growth and jobs, but really in
supporting communities, too.”
Davison and most other entrepreneurs would likely agree that these
risk-taking, job-creating, innovationleading startups could also use all the
help they can get in a fragile economic
environment.
“Small businesses are not just little
business: they don’t have HR departments, sales departments, regulatory
compliance departments – so they are
pulled in all these directions,” says
Carmichael. “If we can really support
that sector, it bodes well for our economic recovery for Calgary.”
As Davison looks ahead, he plans
to reinvest every cent into his business and hopes to encourage others to
take the entrepreneurial plunge. “Calgary and Alberta definitely has a lot of
old money and that’s great for business and economies, but I would hope
there are more people such as myself
starting new businesses,” he says. “The
market needs that.” BiC