Robert Schad

Location: Ontario | Profession: Business Leaders

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Karen Kain 1971

Robert Schad came to Canada in 1951 with $25 in one pocket and a reference letter from Albert Einstein in the other. He was twenty-two, coming from a war-torn country and looking to make a name for himself. Not that the letter made a difference. He says today that he never used it. It still sits in a drawer in his office. Instead Schad succeeded in Canada, as he tells us, through his own hard work.

Karen Kain 2005

Profile

Finding a Niche:

At 23, Robert Schad worked for a year at a transmission factory before securing a job with Volkswagen. The company had just set up a Canadian office and began importing cars in the early 1950s. He worked for a year in the sales department but grew restless. He learned very little and refers to it as a “dead period”. The only exception came when he was allowed to investigate alternative uses for car engines.

Volkswagen did a project with IBM, just as the latter was moving from punch card machines to its first general-purpose computers. Schad approached an IBM representative and inquired about the company’s success in finding suppliers in Canada. The rep showed him one of the commercial computer chips that IBM had been developing, claiming they could not find a Canadian source to manufacture them properly. Schad, seeing an opportunity, examined the plans and then proposed that he himself be made supplier.

Feeling cramped at Volkswagen, he left to start his own company at the age of 24. It was an amicable departure. He left promising he would continue to use their engines in his work. He never did.

Now he was on his own. From a garage on Toronto’s Yonge St., he established himself, working a variety of jobs for different customers. Though less financially secure than with the automobile manufacturer, it satisfied him. He was able to work on technical problems and he didn’t feel cramped working in a narrow field.

The first major project was for the design and construction of a snowmobile. A newcomer to Canada, he figured it would be a required vehicle – every Canadian would need one at some point – the building of which could lead to a lucrative contract. He spent his time devising and building the huge one-tonne yellow machine. Unfortunately, it never worked. The problem was it ran only on asphalt and not on snow. The machine had to be scrapped. It was his first setback. But as a result, he acquired two things. He learned how to deal with failure, how to start anew from scratch, what he calls putting your “nose to the grindstone”. But he also used the name of his snowmobile for the new company, calling it Husky.

What is Injection Molding?

Injection molding is a process that forces plastic resin through a heated tube into a mold where the plastic cools and hardens into the shape of the mold. Recycling bins, skis and automobile body panels all require molding of some sort. Husky sells molding machines to other companies who use them to make their own products.