Gateway to success From humble start as fundraiser cookbook producer to custom plastic extrusion maker, Winnipeg company thrives on honesty, customer service Made in Manitoba
By: Aaron Epp Posted: 7:54 PM CST Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024

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This article was published 07/11/2024 (618 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Quality products and outstanding customer service are key ingredients in the Gateway Group’s recipe for success.

In a short history of the company he published before his death in 2000, founder William DesJarlais wrote about how Gateway’s valued employees understand most business problems can be handled or avoided by honesty and good service.

“I firmly believe that any success we have gained at Gateway is the result of the application of this policy in all our dealings with customers and suppliers,” DesJarlais wrote. “We are proud that most of our customers come to us as strangers and come back time after time to do business with us as friends.”

Founded as a publisher specializing in cookbook fundraising projects for community clubs, churches and other organizations, Gateway Group has since grown into a company made up of six units:

— Gateway Rasmussen continues the company’s tradition of helping community groups create beautifully designed cookbooks for fundraisers;

— Gateway Publishing operates a state-of-the-art digital print facility for things like short-run book publishing, policy manuals and employee handbooks;

— Gateway Bookbindery services the company’s in-house needs, as well as outside jobs;

— Plastikoil is a plastic spiral manufacturer;

— BindAmerica.com is Plastikoil’s online store for small-volume users, and;

— Gateway Plastic Extrusions manufactures custom plastic extrusions.

The Winnipeg company employs 45 people and is headquartered in a 50,000-square-foot facility on De Baets Street in the St. Boniface Industrial Park.

“We try not to call them divisions because it divides,” vice-president Rene DesJarlais says of the company’s various enterprises. “We call them units because it unites.”

Rene and his father, Matthew DesJarlais (son of William DesJarlais), are the company’s co-owners. Matthew is the president and big-picture visionary; Rene manages the company’s daily operations.

“It’s that small-business, entrepreneurial kind of spirit that gets us through it all,” Rene says. “That’s all absolutely handed down from my grandfather, from my father to me.”

William was living on Gateway Road when he sold his first cookbook fundraising project and started the company in his basement in June 1965. The company would move through four different headquarters as it continued to expand over the next 14 years.

Gateway was binding its books with comb bindings. The company was especially interested in a continuous plastic binding that allows books to lay flat when opened, with the ability to fold back a full 360 degrees. In May 1979, the Gateway Group purchased a bindery specializing in the plastic coil process.

William, Matthew and the company’s engineers took the basic coil forming equipment and the plastic formulas and improved on them to create Plastikoil, the world’s largest manufacturer of plastic spiral binding products and equipment. Plastikoil sells not only 45 different colours of plastic spiral binding, but also the equipment needed to make and insert it.

Plastikoil was an important step for the company, Rene says.

“We’re not the only people in the world that make coil, but we are the only people in the world that make equipment like this that can satisfy those customers’ needs,” he says. “So that was the real turning point where we started making real profits and seeing real growth.”

As Plastikoil took off, the company moved a few more times until building its current headquarters in 2002.

The Gateway Group took another important step when it started Gateway Plastic Extrusions in 2012. The company had been extruding plastic filament for more than 25 years by that point and decided to use its knowledge and infrastructure to create custom pipe and profile extrusions for almost any application.

Its production facility operates 24 hours a day, five days a week, creating functional and economical profiles. The venture has been so successful it now accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the Gateway Group’s business.

“We’re super excited about custom extrusion and where it can go from here,” Rene says, adding the company has made everything from door sweep strips to parts for beehives to parts for the automotive industry.

“It all really depends on the imagination of the customer and what problem they’re looking to solve or what part they need to make something work.”

The diversity of the Gateway Group’s units allows the company to stay healthy, Rene says. Employees are cross-trained so if business is slow in one unit, they can move over to a unit that’s busy.

“We’ve got a lot of guys here that are jack-of-all-trades,” he says. “We’ve definitely got some masters, as well, and you need them, too, but we wear a lot of different hats every single day.”

The company’s annual revenue is $8 million, and Matthew and Rene know their employees are key to that success. When COVID-19 reached Manitoba, they made a commitment to their staff no matter how slow business got, no one would be laid off and no one’s hours would be reduced.

“It was a very stressful time, but (it’s) the people that get you through it,” Rene says. “People have ideas — equipment doesn’t. People have passion and dreams — equipment and buildings don’t. So that was the main thing: keeping our people supported and for them to have a salary that they could count on, no matter how scary the outside world looked.

“I couldn’t see us doing it any other way. A big round of layoffs to keep profits high? That’s not why we’ve been in business for 60 years.”

Rene started working on the manufacturing floor at the Gateway Group when he was in high school. Thirty years later, at 46, he still enjoys working at the company.

The thing his grandfather wrote about customers coming to Gateway as strangers and returning time after time as friends still rings true today.

“I’m sure if we wanted to we could bleed this company and squeeze every penny out of it and line our pockets,” Rene says.

But that’s not what the Gateway Group is about.

“It’s about being part of an industry and meeting people and solving problems and finding solutions. That’s the rewarding, exciting part of it.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca