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“I'm doing something that helps people. So that's really rewarding—being a younger person in the industry, I get to help people, and I get to help people help other people,” says Christopher McIntosh, technical sales rep at Harnois Greenhouses, in this edition of Greenhouse Success Stories. From bridging French and Western Canadian cultures to orchestrating complex greenhouse installations in some of the country’s most remote communities, Christopher McIntosh reveals how Harnois’s relentless focus on quality, local materials, and community networking transforms both food sovereignty projects and commercial operations alike.

Discover how a blend of business savvy, family legacy, and youthful energy is shaping the next chapter of greenhouse innovation—listen in to find out why growers of all sizes turn to Harnois for top-tier structures, support, and connections.

Key Takeaways

1. Quality is everything—choose partners who source local, high-grade materials for lasting results in your greenhouse project.
2. Don’t navigate alone. Connect with experienced growers and suppliers through industry networks to gain hands-on solutions and best practices.
3. When planning your greenhouse, hash out crop types, design needs, and future flexibility early—customize your structure to grow with your vision.
4. Leverage your equipment provider’s expertise and resources; ask about turnkey solutions, in-house engineering, and connections for ongoing support.
5. Take the first step now: reach out, ask questions, and get advice from your greenhouse manufacturer—they’re ready and willing to walk the journey with you.

Memorable Quotes

1. Quality is everything—choose partners who source local, high-grade materials for lasting results in your greenhouse project.
2. Don’t navigate alone. Connect with experienced growers and suppliers through industry networks to gain hands-on solutions and best practices.
3. When planning your greenhouse, hash out crop types, design needs, and future flexibility early—customize your structure to grow with your vision.
4. Leverage your equipment provider’s expertise and resources; ask about turnkey solutions, in-house engineering, and connections for ongoing support.
5. Take the first step now: reach out, ask questions, and get advice from your greenhouse manufacturer—they’re ready and willing to walk the journey with you.

Connect with Chris & Harnois

(mention you heard about them on our podcast!)

Chris' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-mcintosh55/

Harnois Website: https://harnoisgreenhouse.com/

Harnois Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SerresHarnoisGreenhouses

Harnois LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/serres-harnois-greenhouse/

Harnois Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harnois.ghs/

Harnois YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFgZ9qgSov7mQfHEUD0YpQ

Harnois Pinterest: https://ca.pinterest.com/harnois_ghs/

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Mentioned in this episode:

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Greenhouses for supporting this show. Now let's get into today's episode.

Harnois' focus always has been and always will be on high

quality. So whether that's steel, we get Canadian steel, high

quality. We're not taking stuff from Asia and these other markets where,

you know, there's known to be discrepancies in quality.

Our focus has always been quality. Welcome to Greenhouse Success

Stories. Tune in every week as we share conversations with growers,

operators, and innovators from around the world, providing insight into what's

working in their greenhouses. We discuss firsthand experiences and

provide insights into how these farms are succeeding and thriving.

Special thanks to our title sponsor, Arnois Greenhouse. With your

host, founder of Little Greenhouse That Could, Trina Semonchuk.

Okay, welcome back everyone. Thank you for listening this far.

We really wanted to interview our show

sponsor, Arnois, so I'm very happy to

have Christopher McIntosh here today from Arnois.

He is a technical sales rep for Arnois, and he's going to

be talking about his experience in the greenhouse industry. So thank you for

joining the show, Chris. Thanks for having me, Trina. Do

people call you Chris, or is it Christopher? Chris is fine, yeah, a lot of

people call me Chris. Christopher is like more of a French way of saying my

name, so it's the easier way for the people at the company to say it,

but out west, typically Chris, yeah.

Okay, very interesting. So, okay, so

Christopher, were you born like in Montreal? Like, are

you, are you, do you have French background in you? Yeah.

Yeah. Hardware is French. My mom was born right near

the, the office, like right near it. And so she grew up and

started working for them. And then my dad started working for the company out

in the West as a sales rep and they met. And then,

um, I'm, uh, Came from that, I guess.

Long story short. But yes, my mom's family's all from Quebec. We go back there

every Christmas to go visit. I go to the office every now and again. And

yeah, so I do have the French side of me for sure. Okay. So your

mom met your dad, um, through Harnois in,

in the company, or did your mom and dad meet first and then your dad

started working? Yeah, my dad was working for a different company that was

like selling Harnois products, I guess. And then, um,

they had some meeting where they had to go into the Harnois office and, and

meet the Harnois people that they were selling their products in the West. And so

that's where he met my mom in that meeting for the first time and then

chatting more often. And then one thing led to another. So now, yeah,

they're still together 25 years later now, I think. Yeah. 20, 24

years later. Do you feel indebted to Harnois? Like you owe your life

to Harnois as a Harnois baby? No, no,

not at all. No, Arnois has been so nice to us. And,

uh, but by no means do we feel obligated to do any of that stuff.

They're just great people to work with. So they're good. It's a good team effort.

Oh, that's great. Okay, so your mom has a history of

working at Arnois. Your dad has a history of working at Arnois.

Um, what were both of your parents doing

at Arnois? Like, what were their roles? Are they still working at Arnois?

Both of them? My mom's gonna rip me one if I don't get this right,

so I'm gonna try to ace this, but I, I don't think I'm gonna get

it right. So I think she started in accounting and then worked her way

into a management position and I think became some sort of

a direct, like a sales rep managers, like a kind of operating

that sort of side of things, I believe. Sorry, Mom.

And then, um, my dad has just been a sales rep the whole time,

so he's been with the company for over 25 years. as a sales rep.

My mom has moved on, I think I want to say around like early

2000s, and now she sells— she's still a sales rep,

but she sells like fertilizer and peat moss and those sorts of things

out in the West here. Okay. Like,

does Harnois have a partner for fertilizers and supplies and

whatnot, or like preferred people that they work with? We have solutions for

basically, and partnerships in place for a lot of the stuff we put

inside the greenhouse as far as structural or things that

help run the greenhouse. But the day-to-day things that happen

inside the greenhouse, like cultivating or who

you're going to get your resources from, whether that's

fertilizer or who you're going to do certain little aspects of your

greenhouse with, that can be local. And so a lot of the times we don't

necessarily step in and have that resource. We We do have suppliers

we work with, or like, this community is so well

knitted and everyone kind of knows each other.

So whether you're like, hey, I need this, you know, Harnaut might not offer that

in our greenhouses, but I know someone who can get you that, or I can

find someone who will help you. And so whether it's like, oh, I need baskets

for my picking fruits, do you know someone? It's like, well, yeah, I know Francisco.

He's the guy from Thunderbird Plastics, whatever, you know, like those sorts of things. Like,

I don't need, we don't, do that, but this community is just so well

meshed that it's kind of a team effort in those sorts of senses.

So what is your background and your story of

being involved with greenhouses? Like, have you kind of always

been involved with Harnois? I'm sure you went to Christmas parties as a

kid or something like that, but maybe explain to us

a bit about your story of getting involved with the company.

How long have you been here for? Kind of those details. Yeah, sure.

So I actually was not a fan of

agriculture growing up, believe it or not. That's kind of a niche

thing. I thought it was kind of boring, to say the least.

I was a big sports guy, so I wanted to be like in the sports

industry, and I thought I would be like on TV interviewing, you know, Sidney Crosby

one day. And then that

sort of shifted as I got older, and then I really had a passion for

business. And so I did my undergrad in business management

in, uh, UBCO in Kelowna. And so I kind

of was looking for internships at one point, and my dad suggested, you know,

would you ever be open to the idea of doing something with Carnivale? I can

ask, uh, Felix, our boss, or AKA Corinthian, Mm-hmm.

what he thinks about it. And, you know, you can have a discussion and throw

an application in there and do the whole, you know, go around it the way

you should. And so I did, and I kind of

got this internship that they made up for me to do market development.

So I was basically doing like a

research analysis of the industry and

providing big target clients to go after, those sorts

of things in the West, just because the company's based out of the East, so

they don't get that kind of boots on ground feel for things.

So I did some tours of some greenhouses in the West, those sorts

of things. And then I finished university after that, and

then I just kind of kept helping my dad with projects on the side while

I was looking for work. And it just kind of kept taking on more

responsibility, more projects. And then it kind of just built

into this thing where I now work with Hardinwa directly and we

just— I'm a sales rep now. It's just kind of,

it's kind of just built into this. So it's not really been like a, hey,

I sent a resume in and got it. It's been like a series of small

steps to make my way towards being a sales rep. Um, and understanding

what Harn was all about. Yeah, that makes, um, that

makes a lot of sense. When you were helping, you know, your dad

casually with projects while you were finishing university, what did that look

like? Like, what were you helping him with and what were you working on?

Sure. So he, at the time, was handling a, like, juggling a lot of projects,

and this was post-COVID, so everyone's just kind of getting back into the swing of

things. So a lot of the smaller projects, it was hard to give his full

attention to. Being the only rep in the West, he

handled Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta,

BC, as well as some projects that came out of like Western US.

So it was a large territory to cover. And so those smaller projects, it's easy

for them to kind of be very time-consuming. And in those

situations, it was, we needed someone to kind of help him. And so that's

kind of where he was like, hey, can you just give me a hand? You're

not really doing much today, but can you maybe call Maybe put the video game

controller down for a bit and give me a hand. So I would step in

and try to help them out there. So that's kind of how that started. Okay,

nice. Yeah. So I guess like, just like with helping them find like the right

equipment and clothing and all those things, like what

entails, what's part of your role as a sales rep?

Yeah. So it would be like, when I first started doing those things, it was

like, there's a, we do some background engineering on things based on

locations of greenhouses. Right? Because a greenhouse project in

the Yukon doesn't look the same as a project in California. You don't need the

same strength or steel or those reinforcements that you

might need in a southern project. So we have kind of worksheets in

place to calculate those for us without having to use an

engineer every time. And like, our engineers do help, but there's just like the

early legwork can be done without them. So I was doing that

part. And then getting the quoting done, kind of just building those relationships with

the clients and finding out their needs. As a new

person, like, you should see our sales catalog. It's like 300 pages long, it feels

like, and it's all these little parts, nuts, bolts. I don't know them, but

someone with 25 years experience does. So they'd say, hey, I need these sort of

things. Can you give me a quote? And I would say, I can. I'll

find a way to get it for you. And then, like, my dad and I

worked together. to get the parts list together, and then I could do

the quote from there on. Yeah, that makes sense. So when

do you guys bring in engineers? So do you put together

like preliminary design, you know, a quote for the

structure and all the equipment, and then once like the customer

has a package, do you then have partnerships with like local engineers that have

stamping authority? We have stamping authority in every

province in Canada, I believe. And a good

chunk of the US states as well. We also have a Mexican division,

Hard Rock Mexico, and so I don't really know about their operations

fully, unfortunately. You'd have to get someone from the Hard Rock Mexico, or I

can get, I can get you in touch with someone who can give you more

information on that. But the stuff in Canada, we can all do our own

stamps on, so we have no issues with that. So someone would come to us,

we do the legwork, we know what the requirements are. However,

given certain circumstances, there are exceptions to rules, and there

are certain places where you need extra reinforcement. Like

a retail store, like a storefront greenhouse isn't going to be the same as a

farm use greenhouse. It's just not. They don't have the same type of

requirements. So there are different sort of specs you need to keep up to.

And then, yeah, if they need permits, we can do all the stamping for them.

And that's something we offer at Harnois. That's, that's That's part of the

services we have. That's not an added charge, nothing like that. It's just the,

we feel it's the base level of comfort we need to provide clients.

Right. And by permits, you mean like, you know, the structural

drawings for the greenhouse structure itself? Yeah,

there's a couple kind of permits you can get. I think there's like a

C-2 or something like that. I'm trying to think

of it off the top of my head, but yeah, there's a couple different permitting

documents. You can get done. So if you build a greenhouse tomorrow, I would tell

you, do you need permitting? That'd be one of the first questions I would want

to ask you. And then you could go, well, I don't know. So then I

would say, you need to go to your local authority and you need to ask

them. Then you go there and they say, yeah, you need to fill out these

forms, come back and fill these out with these filled out. And then

so you could send those to us and we would help stamp those and get

the approval that our design is going to meet the code to your area

and to these requirements that you need in place. And that's kind of how Arnoa

plays into that. And then your job as a sales rep is

to get like the initial package and, you know, design

prepared. And then you guys have in-house engineers that, you know,

have the authority to stamp the structure.

Before even that, maybe I would say the earlier phases of someone

inquiring about a greenhouse, we kind of want to know how

we can best fit our solutions to their needs.

And so, for example, a lettuce house and a

tomato greenhouse don't look the same. On the outside, they might look

similar, but the way the greenhouse is built is not the same. And so

we're trying to hash those details out early on and kind of start

finding a direction we're going to go towards. And then obviously keeping

a budget in mind, engineering in mind, limitations

of the greenhouse and the models we do offer.

So we're trying to just find the best solution with what they

need and what they want and how we can

make a compromise, not a compromise necessarily, but

make a match for each other. So whether that's equipment, heating,

cooling, tables, growing tables,

your gate, like all the stuff you would need in a greenhouse, we're starting to

figure those details out early on. So we can give you a ballpark quote.

And then with that quote, then they go, okay, I like that. And then they

go, then we go, okay, well now do you need permitting? And then that's when

the engineers step in and they'll do the paperwork for the, the stamping

and work involved with that. And then it'll be a,

it'll be an order and there's kind of more to that afterwards. But yeah.

Mm-hmm. How many in-house engineers do you

guys have? Good question. I

want to say 2 to 4. It's

kind of like, so Harnois has 3 different divisions. We have a greenhouse division,

we have a mega dome division, and like an equipment division that I would

call it. Oh, okay. I didn't realize you had 3 divisions. Yeah. So the

other divisions have their own sort of like people. And so

Harnois division, I think, own, we mainly, I'd speak mainly to 2 of

them. maybe that's because there's only 2 that speak English, but for the most part,

I deal with Gennady and Carl. So every

Monday morning, every morning, our sales reps meet with our

engineers and we have a big sales meeting and we go over kind of questions

we have, certain projects that are needing engineering,

you know, attention and how the timeline's looking like. Is this a

feasible project? Because people come to us with all sorts of ideas. And so we

need to know, and hash out, is this doable? Is this something

we can take on? How can we modify it if it can't be done? Can

you tell a story of one time of how Harnois helped one of its

clients be successful? Yeah, sure. So,

I'm thinking of a certain project we did with the First

Nations group in BC, and it

starts off early on with, you know, a couple people getting

involved with the project and inquiring. And then, um, this

probably started out in February of this year. So a pretty recent project, like, that

comes to mind here. Great to work with, uh, lots of meetings back

and forth, hashing out details of what they need, what they don't need. And this

kind of goes on a couple months. Right. And then it's time to order.

Uh, everything's kind of going well, and then we hit a

roadblock with delivery. The issue being shipping

to some of these remote places. comes with its own challenges. In

this case, we needed to ship on a barge twice

to get this greenhouse there. So you can imagine the challenges in

shipping a greenhouse alone and then putting it on a boat,

delivering it somewhere, and then putting it on another boat and delivering a second time.

That's how remote some of these places are. But yeah,

they're doing food sovereignty programs in their community, and

our objective was to you know, find the best solution for mixed variety

crops, make sure the greenhouse is fitted to handle,

you know, if tomatoes end up being a really big hit in the local greenhouse,

how can the greenhouse be adjustable for that? And if

instead it's, you know, lettuce, then how can we make it manageable for that? So

it needed to be adjustable and flexible

based on the outcome that the community would end up kind of

Leading towards later down the road after trialing some things. So we

offered a bunch of different solutions, made sure the greenhouse is compatible for

multiple different crops, providing technologies in there that are able to

handle different crops, different times of growing seasons,

and even sectioning off the greenhouse if necessary later on. So we

can divide the greenhouse into different bays. And yeah, so

it was just a lot of back and forth. It got shipped. Just

for reference, this month, I think it went out. It went out on the second

barge at the end of last month. So this is a project, keep in

mind, I would say probably a couple thousand square feet, very small, like one oval

deck size. And so 11 months

of work goes into one greenhouse.

For scale, it's quite small compared to most projects, but we're still giving

that sort of like love and attention and detail. It's not forgotten about or

anything. It's still important to us that whether the greenhouse is small or large,

that you're getting, you know, the HardinWall service and the HardinWall quality that we

promise. Yeah, no, that's great. So this was in BC,

so I'm guessing it was like northern BC. Is it very close to like the

Yukon? It was not that far north, no. It was just like a

coastal island that is kind of difficult to get to. Yeah. Okay,

so that's super cool. So 2 different barges that this

greenhouse had to go on. How did you— so I know you said

like, we had technology

that could be used for mixed-use crops. So can you

give an example of like some systems that you put in the

greenhouse that you knew it could be adjustable

to grow different types of crops based on how the community

was responding to which crops were being grown?

Yeah. So normally it's a mix,

it's a combination of technologies. One technology

doesn't typically give you enough unless you're just going to be growing 3 seasons

and using the outdoor elements the best you can. So we want

to, in a standard greenhouse, we want to use Mother Nature as much

as we can. So we have maximum ventilation when possible. Mother

Nature does a really good job of producing crops, right? We know that. So

let's Let's use air as best we can. The technologies we would kind

of install afterwards is for when the greenhouse is mostly being sealed

up and closed up. Those are when it's most important.

So heating is like the number one thing that comes to mind. People think of

that, right? In the winter, they want to grow. They need heat. Not a bad

problem. In places where it's very sunny, think of prairies, for

example, in the winter, it's very sunny. It can get too hot in the

greenhouse. Yeah. Even if you turn the heat off, it'll get too hot. So now

we need to extract heat or add cool air in.

And an inexpensive way of doing that is just opening, you know, the roll-up

sides, for example, or doors or roof. And there's a problem with

that in the winter when it's -10 outside and you open a door or

open the roll-up sides, it'll flash freeze the crop and kill everything.

So the next best solution is what we call a winter exhaust fan.

And that'll kind of just have a fan at one end of the greenhouse and

a little shutter, and the fan will turn on and draw cool air into

the greenhouse slowly. It'll slowly draw cool air from the outside in, and then the

fans on the inside of the greenhouse will push that cool air around and

lowering the leaf temperature. I guess my question

was, I'm thinking about a greenhouse, if you want to do a

vining crop or a leafy green, let's say herb

crop, You're going to have 2 complete different growing systems, you know, like you might,

or if you're doing strawberries, you know, like with a lettuce or,

you know, leafy green, maybe you have some gutters. If you have a vine

crop, you know, you've got like your trellis and system and whatnot.

What did you guys, did you guys provide indoor growing systems to go

into the greenhouse in this instance? Or was it just like, you know, garden

beds growing in the soil type? That was up to the

customer. How did you get— What did you guys do for that? So they're going

to be growing in the soil for the most part. We didn't sell them any

growing tables or anything of that sort. The greenhouse is equipped to do trellis

crops and trellis supports across the entire greenhouse. So if they choose to do that

later on, then they can. If not, then that's all right.

We included like shading systems, so that can be used

wherever they want to use it. So if they want to add shading just to

the tomatoes part of the greenhouse, then they can. If they want to just put

it on They have their own way of doing that. It's like kind of a

low-tech version of like a shade system, but they do have the shading screens in

place where they can just kind of add them wherever they feel is needed.

And then we're talking about that earlier about the sun being too strong in the

winter. So that's something similar to that. I'm trying to think of what else we

did that would be more flexible. There's always the option to

install a dividing wall on there if they wanted to as well, to change the

climates completely. So if you wanted heating at different

temperatures in the greenhouse, then there's always the option to install a wall across the

middle of the greenhouse. At any point, any of the arches, you can do that.

And so that's always an option as well. Okay, so like a partition

wall? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so that would be insulated as well so

that the greenhouse can keep its different temperatures

without mixing at all and causing much issue.

Okay, it sounds like you put in a lot of detail. To this,

uh, to this project? A little bit. Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah. How many meetings do you think you had with this client? Like, you know,

how did Hard Noir engage with this client? Did you guys set up

like a monthly call, uh, you know, a weekly call? What did that look like?

The calls go in, I would say, phases. Like early on, there's gonna be a

lot of calls. We want to get as much detail as we can to make

sure that we're providing the right solution. Right. And so

sometimes it's, hey, I don't really know about this. Can you gimme pricing for both

these options? And then, you know, we obviously have a conversation about why we're

taking one versus the other as far as an option goes. And then,

so we'll provide those and then we'll go back and there'll be some, all right,

you know what, you know, it doesn't make much sense to do this. It makes

more sense to do it this way. How can we do this? And so early

on, there's lots of conversations. And then between,

once we kind of settle on a design, And

customer's happy, deposit's paid, all that stuff. And there's kind of a, a more of

a calm period. And in this period, it's now our team

internally doing stuff. So they're, they're working on manufacturing,

preparing, packaging, bundling, getting transport ready. So this

is when the clients should start to be getting ready to

prep their land for construction. Hmm. So there's not a whole lot of

conversation going on. Sometimes they'll ask, you know, about install questions or

anchor things and, and this and that. So that's, that's totally fine. We're always here

to help answer questions, but there's no real set schedule. And then once it

went off, because of where they were, they only wanted

us to ship it to like Richmond, and then they wanted to

take the rest on from there 'cause they had like some good connections that they

could use for whatever. And then that ended up being like a big hiccup

for us was that Hmm. the trucking company we work with

arrived and they were not prepared to take this

shipment basically onto a barge for like another 2 weeks.

Obviously the trucker's not gonna sit around for 2 weeks and, and watch the shipment

just kind of hang around. So, you know, Harnois is there to support. We

have a freight logistics department, but we had to work with the team as well.

So I, that's when I kind of take a step back. I, I know what

the project is. I know what we've done for the selling side of things, but

now someone else is stepping in. And they're going, okay, we're going to help you

with this. There's been a hiccup, whatever, not a big deal. We'll

get it there. We'll find a way. So that's when someone else on the team

steps in. But for the most part, it would pretty much be directly like if

you were to buy Greenhouse today, it would mostly be just talking to me

or a couple members of the team if it was more of a specialized project.

If you had questions about engineering, all that stuff, the simplest way to do things

is just through one person and then let me do all the work. I'll go

find the answers for you. So yeah,

basically it's an open door. Like, the conversations are back and forth all the time

whenever questions arise. And then once the

greenhouse gets there, there's often questions about, you know, I feel like I'm, you know,

where is this part? How does this go together? I mean, there's a construction

manual, but sometimes people just want to have a conversation about things.

And so— Just out of curiosity, like, with dealing, you know, or with

working with this community, what kind of support do you

provide with like helping them, you know, run

the greenhouse or helping them with like growing their crops? Because I know that

that can be a challenge with working with remote communities

is, is that knowledge on working in a greenhouse, you know,

year round or like growing crops year round, like there might not be that

expertise in the community. So was that a

challenge in this instance? Or, you know, have you had those challenges

before? And You know, how does Harnois support

those kinds of customers? Yeah, I mean, for the most

part, I would say, like, that greenhouse isn't built yet, so they haven't reached out

for growing needs to date yet. I would say the majority— we do have an

agronomist on our team, so that's a big help,

right? Like, if people have questions, especially specific crops that we

kind of aren't used to seeing, that's when he'll step in and he'll, he'll sort

of have a conversation with the grower. He's also like our sales manager, but he

just, he has a degree, he has a agronomy degree, and he's like

certified, all that stuff. So he steps in and helps. As far as the actual

operations of the greenhouse, we don't, HARMO doesn't take any sort of

action in that regard, but we are hashing some

of those details out in the earlier conversations, right? Mm-hmm. For

example, I had a project in Edmonton going on right now.

Edmonton area. And he's talking about,

in the early stages, he wanted to grow potatoes, like yam potatoes in

the greenhouse and try some other things out.

And then, so we worked with another company, they do consulting, but

from a hard rock perspective, we can just tell you straight away that

like, these are typically lower ROI

crops in terms of investments. So you want to have like high yield,

high turnover, high value crops in those greenhouses that you can grow year round

that have demand. And so that way you're conserving energy and your

crop turnover is quicker and it's going into a more profitable,

you know, revenue stream. Now we're talking with

food sovereignty and nonprofits. That's not their

focus, but it is, it does need to be a focus still is

the production of the food. And so it sort of follows the same trend that

like we need to have food that's like, like lettuce can be

less than a month, right? So we want to have lettuce crops in there, those

sorts of things versus a crop that takes a full year is going to,

you know, just for the space it's taking up and the crop needs to be

worth investing in, right? So those

conversations do happen. We do have some knowledge on like the business side of things,

but we're not consultants per se. We're greenhouse manufacturers, and our specialty is

greenhouses. So we have the tools, we know kind of what it

takes, we know the trends, we know what everyone else is doing, right? Like, we

get a lot of orders in a year, so we know what kind of is

everyone else is doing. And so there's a very big copycat system in place,

so we kind of just piggyback off the growth we know and their experiences.

Post-greenhouse being up and production going in

there, we rarely get calls about

that. I've never had a call about that personally being like, hey, this isn't

working. I've never had one of those calls, and I don't know anyone in the

company that's had one of those calls. Maybe that's a good sign that we're doing

something right and it's just working on its own. I would doubt that. I feel

like growers have a pretty good idea by the time they're investing in greenhouses what

they're doing and how their crops work. So for

them, it's less of a hiccup. Oftentimes though, if

we do know of someone growing, let's say, tomatoes, And they go, well,

I'm growing tomatoes in high tunnels. For whatever reason, this,

if this was the conversation that would happen, it's not working the way I wanted

to. I would go, okay, I have

XYZ grower doing the same thing in a similar climate,

growing the same crop. I'll put you in touch. Yeah.

And that's kind of the way that I would do, like, I'm not an expert

grower. I'm not, but I know people who are expert growers. So why

not just lean on them? They're doing it day in, day out, year in, year

out. I'm not. So don't take my advice for that

necessarily. Hear it from, is it the horse's mouth? Is that the saying?

Just get, get it directly from someone who's doing it every day and they have

the, the years of experience to do it and, and tackle on that sort of

challenge. Yeah, I think that, um, I think that's

probably like the best approach of, uh, getting people help is, uh, making those

connections. So, okay, so you mentioned that, you know, in your

internship, part of your responsibility was

to come up with a plan to help the company grow,

or, you know, look at the building of the market for the

West. So this next question I have for you is, what

is your vision for future growth

of Harnois? And don't feel like you need to give anything proprietary or,

you know, share any trade secrets or anything like that. You can speak, you know,

high level on this, but what do you think is the

vision? Where's the company headed? Yeah, you know, I was

actually trying to get a meeting organized this winter when I go back about

that. But I think, so during my internship, long story short,

Carnival used to have a glass division back in the day. And

then the glass division, for whatever reason, I actually don't know

why, sort of dissipated and we focused on the poly structures and the

polycarbonate structures, those sort of things. Part of my industry analysis,

they were talking about expanding into the glass industry. And so now,

Harnwell has a glass division, it's called Veramax. And so following

my analysis, I guess you could say, they've decided to

take on that glass greenhouse

aspect of the industry. They've done a large project in Quebec doing that.

I think it was about 8 acres in total. The glass greenhouse is like

completely separate to the poly greenhouse structures. that we do. There's a different division,

like it's a separate part of our company, just because they're so unique and they're

so high-tech. Now, as far as the rest of

the growth goes, I'm— I do know we're

working with, you know, expanding as much as we can and being

more boots on ground, uh, being active at trade shows, having our face

in the community, sharing educational things such as like this podcast or

YouTube videos or it's things with the youth about,

you know, what it's like growing in the greenhouse. And so these sort of

tools for growers is kind of a direction we're taking. I personally

have taken on the role of sales rep in like Western US, so we're trying

to expand in the west of the US as well. Why do

you think people should work with Harnois

as their equipment provider?

Sure. Just like only equipment, not structurally, you mean?

Structure, structure, sure. Why do you think people should

work with Farnwal for their structure and for their

equipment? Sure. I mean, Farnwal's

focus always has been and always will be on high quality.

So whether that's steel, like we get our steel Canadian, we get Canadian steel,

high quality. We're not taking stuff from Asia and these other markets

where You know, there's known to be

discrepancies in quality. Our focus has always been

quality. And so many projects will reference

other projects. So let's say you come to me, you go, I'm in Vancouver,

I'm looking to build a greenhouse, tell me about Hardin. Well, I go,

what better person to tell you about it than one of our clients? Like, why

don't you go visit John down the road? John's got a greenhouse, he's kind of

got what you got going on. Why don't you go and see what he's into?

And so oftentimes it's just connections like that. So people can

physically meet growers and hear like a third party's perspective on us, because it's

easy for me to sit here and sell you on, you know, we're high quality,

we're about service and people-oriented, and we're family business, this and

that. But hear from someone who got to experience

the same thing they're about to experience is a great opportunity

for them. So I like to personally do that whenever I can.

connect people with people that have already bought from us and let them, let the

product speak for itself. What about your poly

and your polycarbonate? Where do you guys source all that material?

Yeah, so the only time we outsource anything

is equipment or non,

non-steel things. So steel is all Canadian.

Equipment will be like, we have like some US distributors who use It just depends

where the company's based out of, right? Like, so right now I'm doing a project

for strawberry growing gutters. Those growing gutters are coming out

of Ontario. A lot of our heaters come from the US. I

wanna say Oklahoma or

Kansas, maybe. Might be Kansas. So

for those sorts of things, we do rely on the

company's location. Pauli, if

I— am correct on this. I wanna say

Portuguese, but there's a, they have a

plant in Quebec. It's right by our office. So we just lean, like

that company's so close to us, we just use their products that are already in

Canada for us. It makes way more sense. Mm-hmm. I don't know

the source of every little, you know, like

the fans, for example. I could, I can tell you, I can find out, Get

me that 300-page catalog. Yeah, no, everything's from— yeah, it's

okay. I was just curious. I was, I was honestly mostly

curious about the, uh, the poly and the polycarbonate. I'm

working with a few clients and I'm, uh, trying to get, uh, Harnois

structures, uh, with them. Yeah, we had our own poly. I think it was

like Harnois branded poly. Greek is what it was. It's Greek. Yeah, again,

there's a warehouse right next to like the office, so we just They

keep stuff locally North American. Okay. So to summarize, you know, kind of

your points, people should really consider, you know,

working with Harnois for their structure and their equipment

and all like the— The turnkey solutions. Yeah. Yeah.

That you guys can provide because you guys focus on high quality of

supplies and high service as well.

Like if people have a problem, you'll connect people with others in your

network. help them solve it. Yeah, sure. And, and that goes, you

know, from day one when you inquire, send us an email or whatever, to

long after, right? We have projects that are 40 years old and they come to

us and they go, hey, I still have a house from 40 years ago. I

need a replacement for this. Do you guys still have that?

Well, no, we don't still manufacture that same house 40 years ago, but we do

have parts and we do have steel so we can make it. So we'll make

those parts for those clients. So it, it, the service aspect carries on long after

the, the greenhouse is already up too. Yeah, that's excellent. What

would you say is your proudest moment of being involved with

this industry and working for Harnois? I would

say proudest moment of being in this industry, like

I've been told this once by a client was, you know, this is my dream.

Like, I wanna, I wanna greenhouse and this is my dream. And so to be

helping people in that sort of sense is just very rewarding. You're

providing something that is You know, bettering the world.

You're not, and you're helping people at the end of the day. It still provides

jobs. It provides work, provides food sovereignty,

or, you know, in other cases, let's say it's tree seedlings in the greenhouse you're

providing, you're still bettering the world in a way. So for

me, I think I'm very fulfilled personally in that sense because I do get

that reward of, you know, I get to help people and I get to help

people help other people. And so it's like a helping help. It just, it's a

big thing like that. I would say I'm one of the younger people in the

industry. For those listening that can't see me, I'm 24,

so I'm a bit of a youngin'. I was going to

say this answer is the most Gen Z answer, but

I love it. I love it. Yeah. It's true

though. All the Gen Zs, they want to make the world a better place. It's

great. I love it. It's true. It's true. I mean, you could be selling

Tobacco products or other things that are harmful in some senses, right?

But the idea is I'm doing something that helps people. So that's

really rewarding. Being a younger person in the industry, I feel like

everyone's a good resource. No one's afraid to help.

I've noticed that when I call clients and say, hey, I got a guy up

the road, he's just wondering if he can check out your things. Absolutely, bring him

on down. I'd love to show him around or whatever it is. And

so people are very willing to help, even if they're

competition. I would say there's still people helping people.

COVID was a big example of that. There was lots of people struggling with supply

chain issues and whatnot, and everyone was kind of bonding together to

help each other out. And that's a big part of the ag world I noticed

is, you know, we're

businesses and we're competing in some sense, but At the end of the day,

it's about helping people. So everyone helps each other out, knowing one day it could

be them that needs help, right? Yeah, I've noticed that

too in my experience. Even with like

growing crops and maintaining like a

greenhouse or maintaining, you know, some indoor growing setups,

there's so many different small changes that

could impact your environment that could completely alter how your plant grows.

It's like nobody is going— I mean, there are people who are really well

experienced who are able to like problem solve, you know, all like these

little details of, you know, how to help your plant grow. But

to get to that point, like, you need so many years of

experience. And so to have like a network of people where it's like,

oh, maybe this one person had this one instance happen to them and they know

that the solution is X, and somebody else Had you know this

other solution happened to them, and they have the answer to why. It's

just it's really good to be in an industry that is so well networked

that you can feel comfortable relying on one another because

collectively you might all have the answers, but individually

people might have like 50% of them and whatnot. So I think that's

um I think that's a really good point. Do you have any

advice to new growers or people you know looking to start

up? a greenhouse? Why should they come to Harnois? You

know, how do they reach out to you guys? Sure, I'll

give you a little example. I have a young lady, she's 20

years old, and she wants to buy like a 3-bay gutter connect greenhouse

and do like a storefront in there and have like

weddings in there and grow some produce as well.

And so the conversations start, you know, now

before she's just thinking about it, right? So she sends an email or whatever inquiring.

And since then we've been talking back and forth lots. I saw her actually, the

first time I met her was at a bus tour of a bunch of

different greenhouses in the Calgary area. And she was like, oh, you do greenhouses? I'd

love to learn more. So quickly got talking. She's

just new. She grew up working in greenhouses a bit, so she has some

experience, but through her, we've connected her with multiple different people,

growers, builders, other shows to attend to get

more information and learn more about. And so the network

goes beyond just, hey, we sell a

structure. It's, hey, we have this network of people. It's, hey, we

have these resources. It's really just a

big reaching out with one arm gets you access to, like you said,

a bunch of different people and ideas.

And their experiences help a lot, right? The

head of the AGGA, for example, Alberta Greenhouse Growers Association,

is like this with that 20-year-old. And they,

she's just giving her ideas all the time. And she's always saying, hey, if you

need a bull, send them my way. She's great. She has a list of

greenhouses in like every city. So if you ever are touring in Alberta

and you want to stop by a greenhouse, she's got a map and you can

just go check them out. So everyone's kind of got something that they can help,

and we want to provide that help as well. So I

think that's the— sorry, I'm getting a little

long-winded here, but like, if you're new, we have resources, we have

agronomists, we have growers. What you're doing isn't the

first time it's ever been done, likely, right? We can

help in those situations. Even if it is the first time being done, we have

custom solutions for everything, or we can piggyback off ideas we've used in other greenhouses.

So the experience of having a company that's, you know, 60

years old doing greenhouses, it helps to have that

network of 60 years of ideas working its way

through the chain. And so we feel pretty

confident and comfortable in almost every case. Okay,

well, thank you very much, Chris, for your time on this show.

I think you've represented Pharma Noire,

you know, very well. And I think, yes, and I

think that these are all excellent reasons to be working with

Harnois. So yeah, thank you for your time. And I guess you are

the poster child for Harnois Industries.

Sure, we'll call it that. Thank you so much, Trina. I appreciate you

inviting me on here. I hope you enjoyed this episode

of Greenhouse Success Stories hosted by Trina Semenchuk. Thanks to our guests,

Who make this all possible. Special thanks to our title sponsor, Arnois

Greenhouse. To read the full show notes for each episode, which includes an episode

summary, key takeaways, and guest resources mentioned, please

visit greenhousesuccess.com.

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