Recently our CEO Peter Willson, sat down for an interview with Tharawat Magazine to talk about our company’s close to 100 years of history.
Tharawat magazine aims to raise the awareness on family business challenges, innovation, and development worldwide, to give family businesses a voice in the world and to create a platform for the exchange of opinions between all involved with family businesses. Tharawat magazine publishes collections of high-quality business articles from authors all over the world.
Interview with Peter Willson, CEO of Willson International, Canada
In 1918, William F. Willson gave up his job as a Collector of Customs at the port of Fort Erie in Ontario, Canada to open his own customs brokerage office at the Fort Erie ferry landing. Wm. F. Willson Brokerage Ltd., as the company was then known, was the first Canadian customs broker at the new Peace Bridge. Over a hundred years later, Willson International is now a leading customs brokerage and logistics service provider to importers in Canada and the United States.
Tharawat spoke to the current CEO of Willson International, William F. Willson’s great grandson, Peter Willson, about the history of his family business, how to weather different economic cycles, and the factors that lead to success.
Tell us a bit about your family business history.
By the end of World War I, customs duties and excise taxes were the main source of government revenue in Canada. Since the automobile industry was in its infancy, commercial quantities of imports arrived by either rail or ship. There were no vehicular bridges across the rivers connecting the Great Lakes. Rail bridges also did not exist, so there was an active ferry and barge industry. Ferries crossed the Niagara River between Fort Erie, Ontario, and Buffalo, New York, and a railway bridge crossed the river about 5 kilometres upstream, between Buffalo and Bridgeburg, now the north end of Fort Erie.
In 1869, my great-grandfather joined the Canadian Customs Service, becoming the Collector of Customs for the port of Fort Erie. He saw that trade between the Eastern United States and the industrial heartland of Ontario was about to experience tremendous growth. He resigned from Customs Service in 1918, when he was 53 years old, and opened a customs brokerage office at the Fort Erie ferry landing. Shortly afterwards, he opened a branch office in Bridgeburg to handle rail freight. He also opened an insurance agency and real estate brokerage, which remained operational for many years, though they were eventually sold in the 1950s.
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