Plumbing on a human scale

40th – Economic reflection 2023-2024

“For four years, we have worked very hard on the happiness of our employees,” explains Suzanne Carrier. “We are a human company, with happy employees, and customers feel it when they enter the store,” adds her sister. This is exactly what they wanted to create, coming out of the pandemic. “Employees actively participated in the creation and start-up of Plomberie Mascouche 2.0. », adds France Carrier, referring to the management committee set up by the two co-owners. This committee is made up of employees, which allows them to be involved in major company decisions. Furthermore, when Plomberie Mascouche recruits, the Carrier sisters want to surround themselves with people who share their values. “We are not looking for skills. We are looking for a crush. People who are there for the right reasons and with whom we are going to build a great relationship, because you have to have fun and have fun while working,” explains France Carrier, who still sometimes has the impression of “playing shop.”

A transactional website in six weeks

When they took over from their parents, Suzanne and France arrived in a world that they already knew, because they got involved at a very young age in the business founded by their father, Alain Carrier, in 1989. But they didn’t know that a pandemic was going to disrupt their arrival at the head of the company. “We officially purchased on February 27, 2020. On March 23, we had to close the door. We hadn’t even made our first mortgage payment,” remembers France Carrier. Listening to the saying that you should never waste a good crisis, the Carrier sisters took advantage of this imposed break to modernize the company. “In just six weeks, we made our website transactional,” they explain. Initially, they had doubts about the success of this project due to the very technical aspect of plumbing and all the details to consider when purchasing a faucet or a toilet, for example.

Continued growth

The project not only worked, but it forced Plomberie Mascouche to hire more employees to handle online sales. In the space of five years, the number of employees has increased from 28 to 45, including those in the showroom in the Sainte-Rose sector, in Laval, open since 2012. Since online sales work very well , the company is currently fine-tuning its website. “We want to know what questions people are asking when browsing our site to better meet their needs,” says Suzanne Carrier. In addition, this digital shift is happening without any impact on in-store sales. “It’s very bustling here. There can be a lot of people at the same time since we have a lot of space. We often need a person at reception to properly direct people,” illustrates France Carrier.

The two co-owners have plans in their heads for the future. The company is starting to offer some other products so customers can complete their bathroom shopping by finding everything in one place. No, the Carrier sisters and their employees are not afraid to get wet!