Montreal-based Wetstyle Inc. owner Mark Wolinsky.
Montreal-based Wetstyle Inc. makes big, bold and beautiful bathtubs coveted around the world. Hand-made and hand-polished, the tubs look like sculptures, industrial-strength works of art.
They are featured in some of the world's deluxe hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton, the W chain and the Chateau Marmont, as well as stylish private residences in the United States, Britain, France, Puerto Rico, China, Mexico and Russia. More than 85 per cent of the business is exports, the company says.
The tubs retail for between $5,000 and $10,000 each. They are luxury items for the home, precious in spite of their behemoth proportions. Which is why, a few years ago, when they started breaking en route to their foreign destination, Wetstyle owner Mark Wolinsky knew he had a very expensive problem.
A former telecommunications specialist who purchased Wetstyle in Montreal in 2009, the graduate of the Ivey Business School in London, Ont., did not have prior experience with high-end bathtubs. But his instincts told him that the damage wasn't being caused by a manufacturing flaw. Founded in 2002, Wetstyle, a family-owned company, had already established an international reputation for product design and excellence.
"Wetstyle was a pioneer when it introduced the industry's first composite tubs and sinks over 13 years ago in very geometric and contemporary styling," says Mr. Wolinsky, highlighting the reason why he wanted to take over the company when it went up for sale just prior to the past recession.
The tubs weigh between 77 and 140 kilograms , depending on the model, and are approximately 25 millimetres thick. They had never before fractured during more than five years of export sales and it was one of the first things he began looking at when he became the company's new owner and president.
Montreal-based Wetstyle Inc.' s Tulip tub. The company needed to do some detective work to find out why many of their high-end products were breaking during shipping. (Wetstyle)
"When we investigated the cause it became clear to us that the product was taking a rough ride during shipping and this was doing it harm," Mr. Wolinsky says.
"As a manufacturer, we don't control the transport so we had to do something to ensure that the product was packaged and secured well enough to handle the roughest of rides."
So Wetstyle developed a customized pallet, or skid, that would reduce deflection and result in the tubs not bouncing around as much when freighted for export.
The company also developed a better way of securing the tubs to the skid itself to prevent slippage.
But a key factor was that Wetstyle re-examined how it was shipping the tubs to see if it could further improve on the transportation process.
To save money, Wetstyle had been shipping the tubs raised up on one end, as opposed to sitting flat, in order to take up less space and volume in a transport truck.
However, as Mr. Wolinsky discovered, this method "was actually having a detrimental effect on cost because it was breaking product."
Deciding to ship the gigantic tubs in a more natural position resulted in an immediate spike in transportation costs. But it was worth it.
"At the end of the day, the cost of materials went up but the breakage went down," Mr. Wolinsky says. "But more importantly, these changes, which were implemented in 2010, enabled us to reinstill confidence in our ability to deliver our products intact."
The company is not alone in having experienced shipping challenges, according to one expert.
"This seemingly simple part of the exporting process can trip you up if you're not careful," says DHL Express Canada chief executive officer Andrew Williams.
DHL, part of German transportation and logistics company Deutsche Post AG, operates in more than 220 countries and finds that packaging is a frequent problem.
"The delivery process across countries can involve many bumps in the air, on the ground or waves on the seas. Without proper packaging, products may arrive looking nothing like they were packaged. Damaged products are a sure-fire way to lose loyal customers," Mr. Williams says.
Today it is rare for a Wetstyle tub to arrive in a shattered state.
Besides being better packaged, the tubs themselves are now sturdier than they were, being newly made of a more hard-wearing material. What the company calls WetMar Bio is a mineral-stone composite made from a proprietary mixture of stone and vegetable extracts.
Besides being better packaged, the tubs themselves are now sturdier than they were, being newly made of a more hard-wearing material. (Wetstyle)
"We made that formulation in Montreal," explains Mr. Wolinsky, "as a result of demand from architects, designers and consumers asking for a green product. This was our response."
WetMar Bio represents an improvement over the original WetMar aggregate used to make the tubs.
This more eco-friendly, thermo-insulating material displaces the petrochemical-based additives commonly found in Mr. Wolinsky's industry, replacing them with soy- and corn-based resins.
"We improved the process by extracting the air from the material and that resulted in a denser and stronger material that made the tubs more durable, not only for transport but for the lifetime of the product," Mr. Wolinsky says.
But while more indestructible than they were before, the tubs still experience some bumps in the road.
"One of the challenges of being a Canadian-based exporter is that we, as a nation are not known for our design excellence. That status falls to the Italians and other Europeans who are better celebrated for their high-end design, so that's an obstacle," Mr. Wolinsky says.
Canada, he continues, "is well known for hockey, beer and its natural beauty. Many are unaware of the country's legacy in the design space, producing rich and world-class design products. This motivates us to work hard to innovate and compete at a world-class level in terms of product design and product excellence."
To this end, Mr. Wolinsky often endures a brutal travelling schedule, flying frequently across Canada for business and into the United States to meet with his distributors in cities including Los Angles and New York.
To get the Wetstyle brand better known, he has worked closely with international media to have the company featured in the pages of Elle Decor and other prestigious shelter magazines.
Mr. Wolinsky also attends important trade shows. And in September of 2013, Mr. Wolinsky took Wetstyle to the 65th Emmy Awards, where he managed to get celebrities to pose next to his tub for the cameras.
"Once people see the product, they fall in love with it," says Mr. Wolinsky, "just as I did when I came to buy the company."