Zoa Engineering business owner and Grand Forks local Andrew Zwicker says diversification is key to sustainability with looming tariff threats from the south still front of mind for many Canadian businesses.
Zoa Engineering makes backcountry portable ski lifts with 85 per cent of their businesses coming from the States, however, these last few weeks has seen sales plummet to almost zero, sparking the call for new partners.
“When you’re looking at 80 per cent of your business potentially going to zero, that’s a little bit worrying for a small business.” said Zwicker.
“We are going all out on Europe right now. We just got an export grant for $40,000 to explore exporting into France and Switzerland and Germany. So, that’s kind of taking over as the new company rather than the United States as far as the new customers.”
“Canada has relied on United States as our almost sole customer for a lot of businesses and now it’s kind of a great motivation to finally diversify, not because we want to, but because now we have to.”
The tariffs are marked to come into play mid-March.
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