Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for letting me speak here today on behalf of small businesses. I appreciate the opportunity to share my experience and observations surrounding the interaction of SMEs and the federal and provincial governments.
I'll start off just briefly by letting you know who I am and where I come from, and why I'm sitting here today. My name's Brandon Hall. I'm the operations manager of Prairie Machine and Parts in Saskatoon. We were a young start-up company started in 2010. We've just recently, as of January, been acquired.
For the background of the company, we started PapaBravo in 2010 to design an electric vehicle for underground mining to replace a traditional diesel truck underground. We started with basically just a few of us in a back-shop garage with a $35,000 contract, running on credit cards and lines of credit.
After our first vehicle delivery and successful deployment in 2010, we began to gain some attraction, both locally and internationally. We were approached by a local industrial technology adviser from NRC, and we were granted a project to further develop our product. This initial input is where we really started to gain some momentum. It afforded us to move to the next level with our company without a high level of financial risk. After this project was successful, we received a large contract from one of the local mines. We actually couldn't afford to deliver on it, as we couldn't afford the parts to manufacture it. This is where the federal government came in. Through BDC, we were able to factor our purchase orders, and by factoring them we were able to access some working capital and deliver on that contract.
Over the next few years, we had some exponential growth. We went from about four employees and $50,000 in sales in 2010 to 45 employees and about $6 million in sales in three years. None of this would have been possible without the support of both the provincial and federal governments.
In terms of trade and export development, both governments, federal and provincial, have afforded us the opportunity to expand faster and smarter than we ever could have without their help, namely the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership and the trade commissioner service.
When I was starting to investigate new markets and how I should go about expanding into new markets and what markets to expand into, the TCS was a really good resource for me in vetting potential customers for a dealer network. Angela Dark out of Saskatoon, the trade commissioner here for the mining sector, would talk to embassies and other trade commissioners and give me a background on the people, so I didn't have to fly there to meet them face to face to see if they were a reasonable fit for our company. As a young start-up with limited cash, this was definitely a big benefit.
Also, the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership, without whom we would never be where we are today, their services, advice, and market research were immeasurable in terms of export success. I would also like to acknowledge the success of the BIAP program through NRC, the business innovation access program. We were able to get a fully funded market research project done through this so we could enter some new markets and have some good, strong intel before entering these markets.
With the success of all these programs and how much they've helped me over the last three or four years, I have noticed some areas that I personally feel could use some improvement or maybe some change. In my experience, the hardest part about expansion, both locally and internationally, is juggling risk with available cashflow. As with any business, cashflow is important.
Expansion plans and new markets can demolish a company's available cash in a hurry. What I would recommend to this committee to investigate would be to develop a program similar to the NRC IRAP program.
It would be more focused and strategic program that would target promising young companies looking to expand and looking to grow into new markets rather than the broad approach, which is all these big programs and everybody has access to them. This would target specific companies through a specific project. I want to expand to this market and the government would afford them some financing, some advisers, some market research, and things like that.
It would not be for every company, which is similar to how the NRC IRAP program is not for everyone. In my experience this more targeted approach would offer a greater return for Canadian taxpayers' dollars.
The second portion that I would recommend to the committee is the marketing of products and services. Starting up a new company basically swallows your life up, 80 hours a week, seven days a week. That was normal for me for the last four years and I know there are dozens of programs and financial aids and services available, but the average Canadian business owner is completely unaware.
While you're working these 80 hour weeks, you don't have time to dedicate to looking up these services. If you could get these products and services into the eyes of Canadian business owners, that could really have a lot more momentum and have a lot more success.
I'm very excited by the level and depth of resources that both the federal and provincial governments are putting into trade and export development. I'm glad to see that the federal government has plans in the budget released last week to expand the trade commissioner service and has earmarked some funding for trade and export.
Thank you for the opportunity to bring my experience and my recommendations. I welcome your questions.