As stories go, Ashley Chapman's is a riveting one.
Ashley, president of Chapman's Ice Cream, told the story to local business people at the Chamber of Commerce's annual business dinner October 1.
Chapman's opened for business in 1973 when David and Penny Chapman, Ashley's parents, bought a small creamery in Markdale, Ontario. Over the next four decades, the Chapmans would grow the business from four employees and two trucks to the largest independent ice cream and novelties business in the country with dozens of popular products, 350 employees and 50 trucks.
Then, in 2009, the unthinkable happened. Their entire production centre burnt to the ground. The family quickly converted a dry warehouse into a temporary production facility while building a brand-new, larger, state-of-the-art creamery that would even allow them to expand by 50 to 100 staff. And they did it in record time, just 18 months from the date of the fire.
The new facility is appropriately named Phoenix.
Ashley said there were a couple of overriding themes he wanted to impart to the Yorkton crowd.
"Be cautious," he said. "Make sure you have insurance policies. Make sure if you're engaging in a business that you give it your all and don't get disappointed and give up when things don't turn your way because it's going to happen so you just have to deal with it."
He also wanted to impart a message of integrity and environmental sustainability.
"You should always try to go above and beyond," he said. "You should always try to be environmentally friendly. We've done a huge packaging change that's somewhat unpopular for a lot of our consumers because we've gone to a paper board package that is from a sustainable forestry source. Plastic packaging is great, you can re-use it and all this kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, it was the right thing to do. It's the right thing for the environment and that's what we've always done."
He also talked about the company's recent expansion into western Canada which has been exploding.
"It's wonderful," he said. "This is what every company dreams for. We've got a lot of work to do in the west, but the people in the west are very loyal to quality, because we've impressed them so far and we want to keep that up, we want to have a high quality product for an affordable price and we know it's just going to grow."
Finally he expounded on the new opportunities for marketing.
"You can do all of these things online, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram they're all such important tools where you don't need a lot of money, you just need to have a spark, an inspiration and you can make your business successful," he said.
"The easiest thing is to do contests on your Facebook, that brings people in. As soon as somebody likes your page, they're in. They have identified themselves as your target demographic so already you're directing your marketing exactly where it needs to be, that's something you can't do with the big-sized typical media."
