Setting up a customs brokerage company: the history of W2C
Steve, how did you start W2C?
I founded W2C in 2005. The original idea behind this, considering my family history (my father worked as a customs broker all his life), was to create a firm that specialized in customs brokerage: customs brokerage, customs consulting, some customs training, but no transportation. Naturally, my first partners were freight forwarders or transport companies who either referred customers to us or resold our services through their transport services to them. This is still the case today.
At first, I was alone. I could be on the road to visit potential customers, then arrive at my car and receive a shipment on my phone to clear customs, stop at a Café Dépôt or Presse Café, prepare the shipment and then return to the office. That’s how W2C started.
How did you manage to surround yourself with a strong team?
When you’re someone’s customs broker, people don’t simply line up to work for you. My first employee, Charmaine, was a lady who had worked for a customs broker who had just gone bankrupt. She was having trouble repositioning herself and I was having a hard time hiring. It was a marriage of reason between Charmaine and me! A little later, Alice contacted us for an internship, but Charmaine and I were too busy to take care of her. We didn’t have time to take care of an intern. However, Alice never gave up and we finally recruited her. Most significant of all, Charmaine and Alice are still on the team after all these years.
Little by little, the company grew and I learned to manage a team of several people while defining my management style. I do a lot of team evangelism. I try to explain why we do things and where we are going as a company. Every day, despite the obstacles, I try to give a clear vision to the team around me by being as transparent as possible towards them.
After all these years, what can you say about how far W2C has come?
Every day at work, I see how far the company has come since 2005 and I’m proud to see that we didn’t distance ourselves from what was important to me when I founded W2C. Today we process thousands of transactions per month, but despite the volume, we ensure that a quality control is performed by a customs expert who manually validates the values of the goods and customs declarations before invoicing our customers.
I hope that the dedication and involvement of our team are felt in the customer service we offer. Considering the difficulty of human resources to hire, I am lucky to count on a stable team that has been there for a long time.
What advice would you give to those who go into business?
The advice I would give to those who go into business would be that you shouldn’t give up even if it’s going to take longer and harder than you think. W2C’s course isn’t perfect, but when I look back and see how far I’ve come since 2005, I tell myself that the efforts and obstacles to overcome have been worth it.