Kiosk maker goes to the mall in a big way

Florida has as many shopping malls as does all of Canada, Annette Bourque is fond of saying. It makes sense then, that her small New Brunswick company, which specializes in designing and building mall displays such as kiosks, should look south of the border for new business.

An ArtFX3 retail kiosk

In recent years, Bourque’s company, ArtFX Inc., has won contracts to supply retail merchandising units, known in the trade as RMUs, to some of the largest shopping centres in the U.S. That includes a deal announced this summer to “design and fabricate a new RMU program” for the ultimate in U.S. shopping centres, the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

“They’re undergoing a multi-million-dollar renovation and we have been asked to design all the RMUs for the various sections of the shopping centre,” Bourque said. Her company, based in the Moncton suburb of Dieppe, also has similar projects in New York, West Virginia and Nashville, and has just completed others in California.

As the sole owner, president and chief executive officer of a private company, Bourque declines to reveal any financial details, other to note that a mall contract can run upward of $1 million. That reflects the size of her company’s clients–shopping centres that often exceed a million square feet (93,000 square metres). Mall of America exceeds four million square feet (390,00 square metres), for example.

It didn’t hurt that Mall of America is owned by the Ghermezian family’s Canadian-based Triple Five Group of Companies. Triple Five is best known for the West Edmonton Mall, with which ArtFX has also worked, said Rich Hoge, director of construction and operations at Mall of America. “So it was a familiarity with them and just seeing some of the designs and things that they’ve pulled off in the past,” Hoge said.

That included unique cart designs with high-end finishes. ArtFX has supplied about 30 carts and kiosks as part of $14-million in renovations at the West Edmonton mall over the last two years. Bourque started ArtFX in 1988, after several years as a “visual merchandiser” with national retailers, such as the now-defunct Eaton’s chain. ArtFX, which she describes as “a natural transition from that,” initially focused on providing seasonal decor to retailers.

“We would build and design the large Santa stations and all the holiday decor hanging in the malls: garlands, the big 40-foot trees, animated characters,” Bourque said.

The company no longer deals in seasonal decor, having switched entirely to designing and manufacturing RMUs. A key point in that transition occurred when ArtFX won a contract to design and build decor for the 1999 Francophonie Summit in Moncton. That job required ArtFX to find a larger space than its then 1,100-square metre facility. It found a 2,300-square metre location in Dieppe, where the company decided to remain after the summit contract was finished. But that meant having to find new projects because “Christmas only comes once a year.”

New projects would also mean opening up new opportunities for her staff of creative designers. “We were competing with the film industry to keep those people,” Bourque said. So, she decided to build RMUs, which ArtFX had done previously for a shopping centre developer in Atlantic Canada. It turned out that the U.S. RMU market was also ready for a new player.

In 2003, ArtFX won two major contracts that nudged the company on to that new path. One was to provide RMUs for the new Philadelphia International Airport. The other was a contract with Australia-based Westfield Corp., the world’s largest retailer developer, for RMUs at about 50 big malls in the U.S.

Winning those contracts weren’t just happy accidents for Bourque’s 35-employee firm. In 2001, she had attended the massive International Council of Shopping Centres RECon trade show in Las Vegas to meet in person with potential clients. “One of the first questions I was asked was why should we do business with you when we’ve got lots of people in the U.S. who are selling these RMUs?” she recalled.

Back then, the loonie was trading about 65 cents U.S. Bourque quickly calculated that the big companies would save $750,000 to $1-million a year–just by buying RMUs in Canada. “Things have changed since, but at that time that really was not an important factor,” she said. “Not even at $1 million.”

What was important to her prospective clients was the record of a supplier, how long it had been in business, and, mostly importantly, would it still be in business in five years. Bourque heeded that advice and has not missed an ICSC RECon show since.

Her attendance at a regional travelling show in Baltimore led to an invitation to bid on the Philadelphia airport request for proposals. “And we won on the basis of our designs.”

To ensure that production meets her design standards, the company continues to manufacturer its products in-house, in New Brunswick. Workers employ a range of tools – some featuring computer numerical control (CNCs), sliding saws, edge-banders, moulds and bending machines – to shape metals, laminates, acrylics, glass, plywood and other materials into RMUs.

“It was always critically important that we deliver what was sold. Therefore we said ‘we really need to get control of this,’ which is when we set up the manufacturing.”

Bourque also makes it easier for her U.S. clients to deal with a Canadian manufacturer by taking care of all the export paperwork. “So when our products are delivered to our client’s doors it’s no different than if they’re buying from an American company.”

ArtFX is now scouting a location for a U.S. office. Bourque was born in Miami to Canadian parents and grew up in Moncton. As she discovered on a drive to Boston a few years ago, Moncton is close to major U.S. markets.

Those markets, which now account for more than 70% of ArtFX’s business, are also highly competitive. Even the Mall of America’s Rich Hoge wasn’t about to guarantee that ArtFX will get all the mall’s future RMU contracts. “It’s a decent relationship. We’ll continue as we always do and evaluate where we purchase things from, and always be looking at others to provide us assistance as well,” Hoge said.

In Bourque’s peripheral vision are emerging markets in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Her company has built RMUs for one small shopping centre in Ireland. But that’s just a baby step. “We have been approached by companies in the U.K. to collaborate with them, both from a design perspective and manufacturing perspective. We’re just analyzing whether that is a good fit for our company or whether we want to approach those markets differently.”