NAED MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Ouellet Electric Heating
Third Generation Now Leads Company
Ouellet Electric Heating, headquartered
in Quebec, Canada, is a family-owned
business that has been involved with
electric heat for nearly 45 years. In
that time, the company has grown
from three to four employees in a
small machine shop to a facility of
approximately 150,000 square feet with
close to 300 employees.
distributes and sells electric heating
systems throughout North America
where they offer electric heat solutions
for the residential, commercial and
institutional markets. Last year, they
produced their 10 millionth baseboard
heater.
“It’s been a success story,” Beaulieu
commented. ”Today, my brothers and I
“My grandfather, Jules Beaulieu, was
are the third generation that’s active in
the purest form
the company. We
of entrepreneur,”
are a family-run
said Louis
business. We are
Beaulieu, Ouellet
the owners, we
sales manager.
are the operators,
“He quit school at
and we’re on the
the age of 12 and
ground selling to
Left to right: Louis Beaulieu, Philippe Beaulieu,
became a tailor.
our customers.”
Martin Beaulieu and Raymond Beaulieu.
He started from
Ouellet focuses
scratch with little
on listening to what distributors and
education and not a lot of money.”
contractors need and then they meet
Beaulieu started out slowly with a wide
those needs. “When our customers have
variety of business ventures including
concerns they are quickly addressed,”
one making dentures. In the 1960s, he
Beaulieu stated.
joined a business that manufactured
One example of listening to their
and sold electric furnaces. They
customers needs is when they began
designed their first electric baseboard
to enter into the U.S. market. Those
heater in 1976.
customers were asking for baseboard
Today Ouellet designs, manufactures,
heaters that were measured in feet
THE CURRENT : WINTER 2014
instead of meters. Ouellet went to work
and created a product specifically for
the U.S. market.
The company has been active in the
United States for approximately 20
years and has had some high profile
projects in the Chicago area, including
Trump Tower. “We’ve had quite a bit of
success in the U.S.,” Beaulieu said. “But
there is still a lot of room for us to grow