Transparent strength

RURAL MUNICIPALITY OF ROSSER — It’s not unusual for staff at ClearSecure Manufacturing & Distribution to encourage people to take a baseball bat or sledgehammer to the company’s signature product.

As far as visuals go, it’s a striking one. The company manufactures and distributes crystal clear security panels for windows and doors known as RockGlass.

“We’re a solution for broken glass,” says Colleen Munro, the company’s founder and president. “That’s kind of our catchphrase.”

People who visit the company, located just north of Winnipeg in the Rural Municipality of Rosser, can don protective gear and swing a sledgehammer at a door-sized panel to see if they — like the legend of Arthur removing Excalibur from the stone — might be the first to successfully reduce RockGlass to pieces.

It’s yet to happen.

Munro and vice-president Vince Croker stop short of describing RockGlass as indestructible, but it is virtually unbreakable, resistant to abrasions and chemicals (including graffiti), easy to clean, reduces noise and does not yellow or become distorted over time.

The company also offers RockScreen, which it advertises as an untearable, rip-proof and breathable solution for the vulnerable parts of a building that still require airflow.

Croker recalls recently seeing surveillance camera footage from a drugstore outfitted with RockGlass. According to Croker, the footage showed people pulling up in a car, taking two garbage cans out of the vehicle and using them to try to smash the panels so they could steal goods from the business.

The RockGlass held strong and the would-be thieves eventually put the garbage cans back in the car and drove away. For Croker, it’s a prime example of how RockGlass can keep a customer’s assets secure.

“It’s a real deterrent and it stops the average vandal that wants to get into a business,” he says. “That’s what we’re protecting.”

In addition to ClearSecure, Munro owns a collection of businesses that includes Hugh Munro Construction, a heavy civil construction company; Fort Whyte Lowbedding Ltd., a speciality hauling company; and Lilyfield Quarry, an aggregate resource supplier.

The entrepreneur developed RockGlass with a team in Manitoba to solve a problem: the cycle of buying and replacing glass for her fleet of heavy machinery after it was continuously broken by vandals.

Munro started ClearSecure in 2019. Formerly headquartered on Wilkes Avenue in Winnipeg, today the business is located in a 21,000-square-foot building in CentrePort Canada, the trimodal inland port that covers 20,000 acres.

The company has 24 local staff members and a dealer network across the country that includes around 40 people. Its annual revenue is around $10 million.

RockGlass is manufactured overseas — Munro and Croker decline to specify the exact location — through a series of processes that involve polymer materials. The product is made in a highly controlled setting using unique equipment, Croker explains.

“I’ve seen (it) firsthand (and) I have to be suited up in a room to watch it being made in another room — that’s how sterilized and specialized it (is) to make our product,” he says. “We’re very, very proud of it … There’s nothing like it.”

RockGlass has two applications, according to Croker. It’s either installed into frames and then mounted directly onto places such as storefronts or placed overtop tempered glass.

The product is used to protect businesses, heritage buildings, monuments and heavy construction equipment, but there are many potential applications, Munro says.

The company has built RockGlass toolboxes and more than one customer has used the product to replace the regular glass in an outdoor table. Munro envisions a time when it’s used to make construction signage and notes RockGlass is currently being tested in Florida to see if it can withstand the impact of a hurricane.

“It’s really endless what you can use it for,” Munro says.

Above the desk in Croker’s office, there’s a sign made out of RockGlass that says, “Make it happen.” It’s a life motto he adopted when he was 16 years old.

He came home one day and told his father he was done with school. His father replied if Croker was going to drop out, he needed to find a job. So, Croker resolved to make it happen and succeed in life, no matter what those around him thought.

He eventually became a journeyman glazier, kicking off a career in glass that’s lasted more than four decades. Every time he encounters an obstacle, he tells himself: “Make it happen.”

It’s a motto that resonates with Munro, who had to make it happen her own way — growing up on the job sites of her father’s construction company and working her way up in a traditionally male-dominated field.

For entrepreneurs, she says, making it happen involves identifying one’s weaknesses and calling upon others for assistance.

“I think sometimes people are scared to say that they have weaknesses, but to me (that’s) always a strength,” she says, adding one of the things she learned from her father, who died in 2008, was to ask for help when needed. “That was a big lesson.”

To that end, Munro is excited about the team at ClearSecure and the partnerships she’s established with CentrePort, the company’s bank and others.

“You can’t be just an island,” she says. “You have to have all these partnerships — strategic partnerships — to be able to help you.”

Munro and Croker are passionate about mentoring youth and working with local organizations to help young people learn about the career possibilities available to them in the trades. (In the past, the company has worked with a local trades school to offer training to help students learn how to install RockGlass.)

The duo are also excited to grow ClearSecure’s business at a slow and steady pace.

The company recently inked a deal with a major home improvement retail business, so RockGlass is now available in Home Depot locations in the Greater Toronto Area. With any luck, the product will eventually be available in Home Depot stores across Canada.

“It’s always about … keeping our base and keeping our dealers and growing that to get to the next level,” Munro says. “That would be my goal.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca