Tri-Star Industries: Mapping the World

NOTE: The following feature story was originally published in Open to the World, in the fall of 2005. It was written by Tom Mason. The story is being used for the Nova Scotia "Come to life" initiative. "Come to life" is a public-private sector initiative that markets Nova Scotia as an excellent place in which to live, work, invest, play, and visit.

The world map on Keith Condon's office wall is covered with tiny stickers, the kind that teachers place in children's workbooks to signify a job well-done. There are about 50 of them in all, each indicating a country where Condon has conducted business.

Starting in Baghdad, the stickers trace the growth of Tri-Star Industries Ltd. -- Condon's company -- in two huge arcs from east to west, across the globe. A framed medal hangs on the wall next to the map, the loose Jordanian equivalent of the Order of Canada that was presented to Condon by King Hussein and Queen Noor at a ceremony in Ottawa.

Tri-Star Industries started in 1973 as an offshoot of a local car dealership, primarily as a manufacturer of ambulances and emergency vehicles. Since then it has carved out a lucrative niche market exporting custom-made emergency vehicles to countries around the globe.

All of the ambulances in Nova Scotia are owned by Tri-Star; they lease them to the province complete with oxygen and medical equipment. At any given time, the company is also busy filling ambulance orders in six or seven countries around the world.

The bright, sparsely decorated office sits about a kilometre from Yarmouth Harbour, in a large one storey industrial building that the company purchased from the federal government in 1989. The building includes a hangar-like garage which holds about 24 ambulances in various stages of completion.

A trip to Yarmouth is a vital part of Condon's marketing strategy. The fact that many visitors might see the town as out of the way is all part of the plan.

"We take a couple of days to bring them here from Halifax," says Condon. "Then we tour them through the Annapolis Valley or down through the South Shore. By the time they get to Yarmouth, they love the place and they're already talking about coming back."

It works. Many of TriStar's clients have been dealing with the company for more than 20 years. Condon started the international part of the business in Baghdad in 1979, when Tri-Star was invited to the Iraqi capital to take part in a General Motors Corp. (GM) trade show. It picked up its first international contract at the show and a few more during stopovers on the way home.

"In the early 1980s, we couldn't fly in to Baghdad because of the Iran-Iraq War," he says, "so we had to go either through Kuwait or Jordon." Those countries have become longtime TriStar customers as well.

Since then Condon estimates that he has been back to Iraq about 100 times. In recent years, South America and the Caribbean have become an important focus for his marketing efforts. He's even learning to speak Spanish. "I love Latin America," he says. "It's a great growth area for us."

Despite the success in the export business, TriStar mostly has stayed away from American markets. "It's a conscious decision," says Condon. "We don't want to be like other companies and count on the U.S. It's a high volume, low price market. We prefer to concentrate on focused, quality directed clients."

Mitch Bonnar is Condon's business partner and TriStar's vice-president of operations. A certified automotive specialist, Bonnar spent 20 years in a senior role working at one of the largest GM dealerships in Atlantic Canada. He prefers to leave the travelling to Condon, instead staying home to manage daily operations at the Yarmouth plant, an arrangement that Condon compares to a marriage.

"It's a great comfort to me," he says. "I get to travel the world looking for new markets, and Mitch stays here and makes sure things run smoothly."

At the Yarmouth plant, Bonnar oversees an operation that produces about 300 vehicles a year, accounting for about $15 million in sales. The ambulances come in many styles, depending on the needs of individual countries; most are built on a Ford chassis, but the company will build on anything. TriStar builds other emergency vehicles as well, including mobile command posts, patient transfer vehicles, fire trucks, and bombsquad vehicles, most of them custom made to order.

The company has also designed and built blood collection and organ transfer vehicles and is currently working on a bulletproof ambulance for the motorcade of a world leader -- Condon won't say who the new owner will be. "We gave up trying to standardize a long time ago," he says. "We love a challenge."

In addition to the head office in Yarmouth, Tri-Star maintains an office in Ottawa and has established "business arrangements" with distributor companies in 10 countries around the world, including Finland, Serbia, Turkey, Jordon, Ecuador, and the Netherlands. However, the Yarmouth plant is the centre of the company's world. About 70 employees work here, constructing aluminum frames and installing the complex wiring, communications and medical systems, one vehicle at a time. Condon has no plans to expand any time soon.

Once the vehicles are completed, each one is driven to Halifax, where it is shipped to customers around the world. "The 300 kilometre drive to Halifax gives us a great opportunity to test drive them."

The building of ambulances is just part of the story. The Tri-Star Group is actually a collection of six companies, none of which stray far from the core competency. Two retail companies are among them: Tri-Star Electronics sells retail electronics, including cellular telephones, computers, and radio systems; while TriStar Graphics is a commercial signage company specializing in vinyl decal applications for commercial and personal vehicles. Tri-Star International taps into Condon's considerable international experience to provide business development expertise to companies interested in doing business overseas.

In many ways, Tri-Star EHS represents the meat of the TriStar Group. The company markets customized emergency medical systems to clients around the world. It's a formula that works well in developing countries such as Jordan, Trinidad, and St. Kitts. "We like to create EHS systems," says Condon. "We send consultants -- doctors who are experts in the field of emergency medicine -- into countries to assess their emergency medical needs, then we design systems for them."

Among the experts the company relies on is former Nova Scotia health minister and Tri-Star EHS vice president Ron Stewart. An EHS physician, Stewart is widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of pre-hospital medical care.

Despite the hectic pace, Condon has no plans to slow down. After all, there are still more than 100 countries on his map that don't have stickers on them. He says that he has just begun to tap into Latin America's potential, and there are large gaps where he has never been, such as sub-Saharan Africa and the Far East. "We're only concentrating on about 10 per cent of the world market," he says. "There's still a lot of potential business out there. We've barely scratched the surface."

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