British Columbia Innovation Council

This case focuses on Inland Glass & Aluminum (IGA) and some of their financial and operational aspects of doing business in North America while having suppliers all over the world. Frank Luciani, president and CEO of IGA, first established the company in 1975 as a sole proprietorship, operating with four other people and his wife, who looked after the accounts.

He discovered that he and his staff enjoyed the challenge of having their workmanship subjected to the scrutiny of the "clerk of the works," the traditional supervisor of government projects. This early penchant for attention to detail led the company to successfully seek out government and other commercial projects in the Interior region of British Columbia. Today, the company employs 160 people in its Kamloops facility, and provides employment to hundreds of journeymen and tradespersons at various project sites across Western Canada.

"We source material from a really wide range of suppliers in Canada, the US, China, Indonesia, Korea and Austria. If currency exchange rates were always favourable to our business, we wouldn't need to have this discussion. But we have never formally analysed the impact of exchange rates on our projects."

Downloads: Business Case Study (PDF) | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | Inland Glass website