A decade ago, we opened our Winnipeg lab and, since then, we’ve been meeting new people and gaining the trust of seed growers in Manitoba and corporate customers as well.
That’s been the key to our success — forming relationships. Hindsight is always 20/20 (no pun intended) but, looking back, we prioritized several key things to ensure our Winnipeg lab became a staple of the Manitoba seed community.
We showed up. From the beginning, we attended grower meetings and trade shows to create rapport with seed growers and let them know that we had a presence in Manitoba. We wanted to get our name out there and show that we were on the ground locally, and not just in Alberta where our head office is.
Our motto is, ‘Never stop growing’ and we live that: we’re always looking to learn. Every year brings new challenges in agriculture, and there’s never a dull year. There’s always something new to learn.
In that spirit, we made learning a priority. Over the past decade, we’ve learned a lot about crops like soybean and their respective industries. When we first started, soybeans were just starting to take off in Manitoba, and there were not many acres dedicated to their production. 10 years later, we’re on the ground inspecting over 20,000 acres of soybeans for production.
The soybean and pulse agronomy lab at the University of Manitoba has been instrumental in this growth. They have been a great partner and helped us serve our soybean customers to the best of our ability, which leads me to my next point.
As we look forward to the future, we are reminded of our key pillar of success: we put the clients first, no matter what part of the country we service. Whether it’s in Alberta, Manitoba or elsewhere, one of the key things that has made our business successful is our commitment to our clients and our ability to give them accurate and quick results.
Ours is very much a relationship-based business. It’s all based on trust and transparency, which is what people look for in a seed testing partner.
