Page 16 - Mobility Management, September 2017

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Gaining Momentum
Motion Composites Talks Expansion Ahead of Its Global Sales Meeting
In the countryside north of Montreal is the picturesque town of Saint-Roch-de-l’Achigan. With 4,500 residents, it’s also home to Motion Composites, manufacturer of high-performance ultralightweight wheelchairs you’re probably hearing more and more about.
Barely more than a carbon-fiber-themed footnote
to American audiences just a few years ago, Motion Composites has been steadily expanding — quietly at first, but with building momentum that’s turning heads.
Winning a 2017 Red Dot design award (for the new APEX carbon fiber chair) will do that for you.
A September Homecoming
This month, Motion Composites will have its first compre- hensive sales meeting, at its Saint-Roch facility that is barely a year old and already has expanded.
The event will be one part education, one part networking and, deservedly, one part celebration, with an eye on the future.
“It is our first-ever global sales meeting,” said industry veteran Tina Roesler, PT, MS, ABDA, International Business Development for Motion Composites. “It’ll be mostly our Canadian and U.S. reps, and we’ve invited some of our international partners. It’s an opportunity for us to show off our new facility, because most of them have not seen that. And it’s for all of them to interact and learn about our product and the industry. It’s just about education and discussion about the territories, what similarities
and differences there are, and how we can all use each other’s knowledge to expand and grow.”
Noting that sales reps can become isolated in the field, Marketing Director John Swandal added, “We want to provide a workshop atmosphere, a lot of team- building, hands-on types of stuff that will not only get them excited about Motion Composites when they get back to their respective territories, but will also give them some key knowledge that will help them and help us.”
Already, an Expansion
Motion Composites’ education team — Roesler, plus clinicians Jane Fontein and Allison Hyde — will be at the sales meeting to teach reps about the indications and contraindications of various wheelchairs, components
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and setups, though
Roesler added, “A lot
of the workshop part
will be driven by them;
they’ll end up leading
the discussion. It’s
product and tech-
nology centered, but with a clinical spin, because part of the education is making sure they know how to present our product in both a technical and a clinical way.”
Motion Composites is expecting around 60 attendees at the meeting, and they’ll network with Motion Composites’ Saint-Roch team, currently numbering about 150 day-to-day employees.
But that number is growing. The manufacturer moved into its new facility in July 2016, then expanded just a few months later, thanks to growing sales globally and winning a significant Quebec contract.
“We’re blessed by the increase in demand,” Swandal said. “Production gets realigned in different locations in the facility to accommodate extra lines, extra production stations. We’re working through that and moving forward.”
“I think the increased size of the facility gives us the flex- ibility to add or subtract production area if we need to,” Roesler explained. “We can reconfigure quickly and effi- ciently to make sure we can get product out the door.”
With its growth in sales, employees and facilities, Swandal said Motion Composites will also be working
on raising brand awareness: “There will be branding announcements made at the sales meeting that will go a long way towards who we will be in the future and how we are perceived by all of our audiences: the therapists, the dealers and the end users.”
Roesler said the industry is already taking notice.
“I think the question now in most places, including the U.S., is no longer ‘Who’s that?’” she said. “Now other manufacturers are paying attention to us and talking about us; it’s fun to see them come by our booth at exhibitions.”
“It’s been great fun,” Swandal said. “I think we’re on an upswing, momentum wise, and from a brand standpoint, we certainly want to take advantage of it.” m
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