Blue & Green Inc. – shortlisted applicant for the 7th Annual IS Awards

“The most important thing for me as a business owner is how much knowledge my employees have and how they can use this to make their work better – not where they come from.”
 

Blue & Green Inc. was shortlisted for the RBC Immigrant Advantage Award for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

Profile

The president of Blue & Green Inc., Hossein Zarrin, is a proud business owner. His small company of 10 people is one of a kind in Canada: the only company in the country that designs dental instruments which are manufactured and sold internationally. Seventy per cent of Blue & Green employees are internationally trained dentists from the countries from various countries around the world.

“The most important thing for me as a business owner is how much knowledge my employees have and how they can use this to make their work better – not where they come from,” says Zarrin.

The knowledge brought by internationally trained dentists certainly benefits Blue & Green. A shared professional background in dentistry helps create trust between the clients and the sales people. In addition, many of Blue & Green’s clients are immigrants, and it makes business sense for the company to reflect the clients they serve.

Finally, language and cultural know-how are helping to expand the company’s client base. For example, Romeo Fermin, a Blue & Green sales consultant and a dentist from Venezuela, has expanded the number of Spanish speaking dentists the company works with. He is also exploring how to export the company’s product to Spanish companies internationally.

Working at Blue & Green may not be practising dentistry, but the internationally trained dentists do use their experience and expertise and get to know the Canadian market. For Fermin, it is an opportunity to meet people in the field and learn how the dental industry works in Canada while working on getting his dental license.

This small company thinks big. By leveraging cultural, language and professional skills of its employees, the company is aiming for new international markets. With upcoming dental convention in Germany (the largest in the world) in 2015, there will surely be more reasons to be proud!