Ensuring Quality with Innovative Products
Danielle Lafond, CEO and founder of LABPLAS
Founded in 1987, LABPLAS Inc. specializes in manufacturing sterile sampling solutions for laboratory transport and analysis. Under the leadership of its current president, Danielle Lafond, the organization shifted its focus to the agri-food industry and international markets in its early years, enabling Danielle to position the company for steady growth over the years. Previously, LABPLAS served the clinical market, but with the development of the agri-food market, a much more promising commercial potential emerged. Over the years, Danielle and her LABPLAS team gradually expanded into several other markets where sample safety is always essential.
Danielle Lafond believes that by reaching out to businesses and participating in targeted presentations, she and her team can listen to laboratory sector users, both in Canada and abroad. As an organization, LABPLAS has built a strong partnership with its distributors, emphasizing transparency and communication. They have also embraced colorful, playful, and intelligent marketing that appeals to the human side of LABPLAS’s scientific clientele.
An Unwavering Leader
Described as authentic, approachable, positive, and resilient, Danielle Lafond enjoys challenging her team and herself to go further and rethink their ways of thinking. At LABPLAS, everyone has the opportunity to express themselves freely, and each employee benefits from their colleagues’ input. Danielle loves people and enjoys getting to know their stories and experiences to establish authentic and respectful relationships based on honesty, strength, and sustainability. This is how she envisions the company, and she promotes this philosophy every day, both to employees and to suppliers and customers.
After studying law, Danielle Lafond served as the head of HR and legal affairs in a company for four years, which explains her human-centered approach to business. After discovering a passion for entrepreneurship at the age of 33, Danielle bought out all the shares of the company she had founded with her father in 1987. At that time, the company had only one machine developed by its employees. Today, with over 100 employees, LABPLAS sells its products from Quebec through a network of distributors to customers in more than 65 countries. LABPLAS Inc. has been manufacturing sterile sampling products for over 35 years to meet the most demanding needs in safety and composition analysis in the food, pharmaceutical, veterinary, chemical, and environmental markets.
According to Danielle, the decision to take full control of the company in 1993 gave her greater flexibility and helped her become more in touch with her feelings. Currently, under Danielle’s leadership, LABPLAS is the second-largest company in the world in its sector. As Danielle Lafond put it, « It hasn’t always been easy; finding financing and establishing our credibility was not obvious, but we succeeded and have built lasting relationships with our suppliers and customers – relationships that have lasted for over 30 years. » She also believes the same goes for LABPLAS employees, as many of them now have over 20 years of tenure, with an average of more than 10 years.
Facing Challenges
Danielle believes that her team is never fully prepared for challenges, and that’s a good thing. She thinks that knowing too much about the dangers that lie ahead could paralyze the company and make it too rigid in its methods or offerings to customers. Here’s what she said: « We must stay open, surround ourselves with the best people, not be afraid to be challenged, and, above all, be ready to dare. We cannot control a situation; instead, we must embrace it and remain resilient. » She added, « Who could have predicted we would face a pandemic? »
Balancing Heart and Mind
For Danielle, success is primarily about finding a balance between the heart and mind, between professional and personal life. She believes it’s about finding a way to be fully present and active in both spheres. And the same applies to the company: it must move forward, push the boundaries, and enable individuals within it to excel and have a positive impact on society.
Future Action Plan
Danielle Lafond continually strives to anticipate her customers’ needs by maintaining close contact with them, as evidenced by the sterile biodegradable sampling bag that the company developed 14 years ago and remains the only one on the market to this day. When Danielle Lafond implemented her first work planning system in 1995, LABPLAS had only 12 employees. After installing several robots, the company worked on another innovation to ensure the quality control of machines. Thanks to Danielle’s strong leadership, the company continues to develop new products every year and manufactures its own production equipment to meet its needs. The company has established a scientific laboratory to validate its products and advance microbiological analysis research. LABPLAS’s team of engineers and computer scientists ensures that the company benefits from advances in methodology, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence, both in production and in all its other services.
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