Fourth generation family firm forges ahead From blacksmith shop to auger maker to steel tubing focus, Imperial Steel Products continues to rise to challenge Made in Manitoba
By: Aaron Epp Posted: 8:00 PM CDT Thursday, Jul. 11, 2024 Last Modified: 2:33 PM CDT Friday, Jul. 12, 2024 Updates

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This article was published 11/07/2024 (466 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Kayla and younger brother Dylan Bobrowski were children, Imperial Steel Products Ltd. was their playground — a place to sneak treats and have fun.

“I was in the back, dipping into the 7up cans,” Kayla recalls.

“I would just come here and ride grandpa’s scooters from the backroom, up and down the hallway,” Dylan adds with a grin.

Twenty years after those shenanigans, the siblings and cousin Mathew Bobrowski are junior executives at the Winnipeg-based steel tube manufacturer.

Mathew joined the company in 2014, with Kayla and Dylan following four years later.

They are the fourth generation to join the family business, and they are being mentored by their respective fathers — brothers and company co-owners Richard and David Bobrowski — to lead the company.

Kayla, who works in accounting and human resources, had aspired to go into business since she was young.

“It’s predominantly been the men in our family who have come to work at Imperial,” she says. “I was excited to get the opportunity to work here.”

Mathew and Dylan, who work in sales and accounts receivable, respectively, were attracted to contributing to the Bobrowski family legacy.

“Being able to be the fourth generation is pretty amazing,” Mathew says.

Henry Bobrowski opened Imperial on May 1, 1932, in Morris, as a small blacksmith shop meant to serve the needs of the local community south of Manitoba’s capital city. The Bobrowski family emblem, which depicts a blacksmith at work, pays tribute to these beginnings.

Henry became known for producing grain augers for the agricultural industry and business flourished.

Several farmers asked Henry to create a better auger — one that was portable with a longer reach — so he introduced such a product to the market by the 1940s. Sales increased over the next decade, requiring the company to look for more space.

In 1957, Imperial moved to its current location at the corner of Century Street and Saskatchewan Avenue in Winnipeg. Henry’s son, Victor, had joined the company by that time.

Business continued to boom. Along the way, Imperial started supplying high-quality tubing to other grain auger manufacturers and different industries.

By 1978, the Bobrowskis decided to sell their grain auger line to another firm and concentrate on tubing.

Richard and David, Victor’s sons, joined the company in the 1980s.

Today, Imperial manufactures a wide assortment of steel tubing. The company specializes mainly in the agricultural and the automotive exhaust markets, but is always looking for new areas where its products are useful.

Imperial’s headquarters is a 95,000-square-foot building that houses the company’s manufacturing operation, warehouse and office space.

There is 300,000 feet of tubing on site and 2,000 tonnes of coiled steel waiting to be manufactured into even more. Much of the machinery at the company, including the four production lines, were designed and built by Imperial employees.

Thirty-four people work at the headquarters and the company employs 10 independent sales representatives across Canada and the U.S.

Imperial also does business in Australia.

“We’re a family business,” Richard says. “We’ve grown up as a family business, we’ve had multiple generations here and we treat everyone from the customer to the supplier to the people on the floor like family.”

If a customer isn’t satisfied, they always have the option of speaking to one of the company’s owners, he adds.

“We’ll sit down and talk to you if you’re not getting the answers you want,” Richard says. “There’s always a window of opportunity to say or get what you need, or express your opinion — as a good family should.”

The last six years have been eventful. Richard says the fourth generation of Bobrowskis have seen far more changes in that time than he saw in his first decade at Imperial.

Shortly after Kayla and Dylan joined the company, then U.S. president Donald Trump introduced a 25 per cent tariff on steel from most countries — including Canada. That created “a big customer relations issue,” Richard says.

Although the U.S. lifted the tariff in May 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t far behind — bringing with it a new set of challenges.

Imperial was labelled an essential business and allowed to stay open because it produces a product used to make farm equipment.

At a time when people were struggling to understand COVID-19 and its potential health impacts, and when there were no face masks available — let alone at-home tests or a vaccine — the company kept running as it dealt with supply chain issues, rising steel prices and an influx of orders.

Employees rose to the challenge and showed what the company is capable of, Richard says.

Dylan adds having a leadership team that gets along, with relationships forged at the dinner table and at family cabins in the Whiteshell, makes challenging times easier.

When a decision needs to be made, Richard, David, Mathew, Kayla and Dylan sit down to discuss it together.

“(It’s) really nice, because being a family you’re able to talk about it very openly,” Dylan says. “You’re all looking out for each other and the employees, at the end of the day.”

Richard takes pride in the company’s long history and the ingenuity displayed along the way.

From a blacksmith shop to making grain augers to manufacturing steel tubing, the company has evolved to suit the needs of its clients. The Bobrowskis aren’t opposed to evolving again in the future; tomorrow they could be making and selling something else, Richard says.

“Who knows where we’re going to be in 10 years from now,” he says, “but I know we’ll still be here and doing well.”

Mathew, Kayla and Dylan are looking forward to the future.

“I love working with Kayla and Dylan — we’re pretty much all best friends,” Mathew says. “I couldn’t ask for two better people to work with, especially as we go forward.”

“It’s a really cool thing to have such a rich family history dating all the way back to 1932,” Dylan adds, “and just carrying that on and trying to expand the business.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca