In Grade 8, with their marks flying out the window and known as the class clowns, Lucien Dnestrianschii’s friend said he’d be a dentist one day.
Dnestrianschii laughed and said in that case he’d become an engineer in America.
Today, the Romanian-native owns Klaus Industrial Design, a small engineering and manufacturing shop in St. Albert. Bringing new ideas to fruition is his business recipe.
“You have to watch what you are talking about because it might happen,” he laughs.
Klaus Industrial Design opened in St. Albert three years ago.
Snuggled in an industrial strip mall at 4 Rayborn Crescent in Riel Business Park, the small shop provides an all-around approach to developing, producing and patenting new ideas.
Dnestrianschii and co-owner Joseph Marcos do everything from meeting customers to discuss an invention, creating conceptual 3D designs, to building first prototypes and mass manufacturing.
They also advise on promoting, trade marketing, patenting, and liabilities.
“We bring ideas to life,” says Marcos.
“He is the guy to design products and I am the guy who tries to get them built.”
Prior to owning the shop, Dnestrianschii first worked in a Romanian tools factory and later, in Canada, water coolers and precision design and manufacturing companies.
He teamed up with mechanical engineer Marcos while working as plant manager for Edmonton-based Dansons Inc. in 2006.
When the company closed its manufacturing plant, the team bought some of the equipment and opened up Klaus Industrial Design.
They now have an in-house prototyping shop that focuses on sheet metal work and a rubber compression machine. But their products range from plastics to automotive accessories, wood pellet stoves, pipelines, recyclable wall tiles and leather designs.
Even a refrigerator made from old wood barrels is in the works.
If the team does not know how to produce something they learn it, says Marcos. If that doesn’t work out they know specialists around the world who can help.
“We try to keep as much in-house, as much local as we can but if things get bigger we have lots of contacts in China, in India and across the world for mass-manufacturing,” he says.
“But our goal is to keep things local, to keep things in Canada. We use suppliers out of Toronto, out of Vancouver for a lot of our stuff.”
Dnestrianschii says he stopped counting how many patents and inventions the company is involved with. Their name appears on the product, whether they only advised the client or actually produced for them.
Their first product was a set of dog treadmills for St. Albert-based dog daycare All Season K9 Awareness. Marcos says both of their dogs tested the product and to this day they are producing the treadmills.
They also use a special kind of rubber band to secure equipment around their shop – another popular product they developed and now mass-manufacture.
Today, the team has about 20 new customers per year, not counting the existing ones. One of the former, Jody Gylender, stops by the shop every week.
Tired of the same-old design for tool storage boxes on vehicles, the Spruce Grove-based electrician by trade – now consultant – thought up a more innovative approach to the boxes’ design and functionality and took his idea to Dnestrianschii and Marcos.
Choosing a small company over a large mass manufacturer came without thought: He is involved in the process, gets to discuss new ideas and sees firsthand how the product evolves, says Gylender.
Plus their eye for design is “second-to-none,” he adds.
“I want people that are hungry for work, that want the opportunity to grow their business,” he says.
“And I think having young companies that work together you force a relationship that carries on as you grow and I think companies like that are more inclined to help one another out.”
Dnestrianschii and Marcos work about 12 hours a day, six days a week.
Marcos says they want to expand in the future, hire more employees and move into more mass manufacturing. Because the bank deems them too small they don’t work with a line of credit but pay cash in advance. That’s sometimes tough, says Dnestrianschii.
But as long as the customers appreciate their work, business will come.
“We never made other than word of mouth advertising. We believe that business should grow on real facts and not marketing strategies,” he says.
“And we know that every customer comes to us for a reason and we try our best to help them.”
