Experience Wanted

Their first businesses went bust. Their second ones turned into  smashing successes. Why? Credit the lessons learned from those first go-arounds. 

- Michelle Goodman

SÉBASTIEN DUPÉRÉ thought he’d stumbled on a winning idea with Les Dégommeurs. At first blush, the steam-cleaning business—which Dupéré launched with two friends in 2006—looked successful. Customers were happy with their service, which removed gum and other gunk from public places such as the airport and theaters. References kept new business rolling in.

Les Dégommeurs had one big problem: While it was bringing in a ton of cash, a lot of it was lost due to an inefficient operation. Compounding the issue, the Montreal ’treps had no strategy to remedy that. “We really didn’t market ourselves in a way that was conducive to growing our business,” Dupéré says. “We were taking one job here, another job there—we didn’t have a clear and concise business plan.”

In 2008, after two years of stumbling along, Dupéré and his co-founders sold the company and took stock of lessons learned. Later that year, they scrapped their original business idea and opened a more profitable one, Dupray, which sells home, commercial, and industrial steam cleaners and steam irons. Today the company brings in $13 million a year in revenue, selling to individuals, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, auto dealers, and real estate and construction companies in North America and Europe.