From left: North Dundas Mayor Tony Fraser, Krown Rustproofing founder Freeman Young, Krown Rustproofing Winchester co-owner Danny Allan, Cody King, Shaun MacMillan, Angus Cowan, and Josh Nielsen.  Tinkess Photo

WINCHESTER – You know you’re on the right track when the founder of the business you make your living from stops in for a visit and brings the coffee and donuts.

Such is the case for Dan Allan, who with his brother Cliff now owns the Krown Rustproofing facilities in Winchester, as well as Perth and Smiths Falls. They also recently purchased the Kemptville location and merged that location with Winchester.

“This will be good for the Winchester community,” said Dan Allan when we caught up with him at the Winchester location on Highway 31. “We’ve just added approximately 2,500 new clients, who will fuel, eat, and hopefully shop in the Winchester community.”

“We’re really excited for Winchester.”

Apparently, Winchester is excited for Krown as well. The phone has been ringing regularly with people wanting to book appointments, or to book “back-to-backs” where they can bring one vehicle in right after the other to reduce the amount of time they spend waiting.

According to Allan, the two facilities were comparable in terms of clientele, but Winchester made the most sense for them when it came time to consolidate. They will still be able to serve the customers they had in Kemptville, since it’s only about 20 minutes away, and Kemptville employees are now working in Winchester.

In addition to Krown Rustproofing president Freeman Young, North Dundas Mayor Tony Fraser and Stephen Mann, economic development and communications officer stopped in to welcome the new owners.

“This is our local entrepreneur,” said Young. “A third Krown Centre, open and running. Both he and his brother have come a long way. They started out literally in a little shack in Smiths Falls, and they’ve moved into a nice facility there, they’ve got a nice facility here and we’re working on one for Perth. They have a nice building there, but I think we’ll be working on building on in the next little bit.”

Dan Allen is deservedly proud of what they have been able to accomplish so far. “Our first year we did 1,500 cars, and it was the first time we had paid off our line of credit,” said Allan. “We were so happy we were doing backflips. That was just one shop, and now in Smiths Falls we’re close to 900 cars a month.”

It’s nice as well that this is a homegrown Canadian company. “We go back to 1986,” said Young.  “And we went to the Ontario Research Foundation to get some help developing our original formula. Then we  hired their lead chemist from ORTEC, and he worked with us for about 25 years. The company started from scratch, every dealer that comes on board in our company is a one-part owner of it. So, it’s a dealer co-op rather than a franchise. The advantage, we think to both the consumer, the shop owner and to ourselves is there’s not a competition between who’s going to make money. My actual job, what I do for a living is work for Dan, for his brother and for another 450 dealers in Canada, the United States, and we also have dealers in Europe. But it all started here in Canada.”

According to Young, the company has never grown less than 11 per cent a year since 1986.

Mayor Fraser extended his thanks and welcome on behalf of the Township of North Dundas. “Thank you for deciding that this is where you want to have one of your businesses and making it [an ongoing] concern.”

“To see an operation such as this here, operating, which and again, to work with staff that desired to be here and show up to work, it’s an excellent thing. It speaks to the business and to you and I offer my appreciation for all of that.”

Krown Rustproofing is located at 2677 Highway 31. You can reach them at 613-774-2806.

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