“When I asked Ross McLaren how a plywood distributor stays relevant after 50 years, he laughed. “I don’t know how many nuggets of wisdom I can give you,” he said. “But I’ll try.”

Over the next half hour, the Canusa Wood Products president laid out a blueprint for something most startups only dream of: scaling across markets, weathering disruption after disruption, and building a culture where leadership renews itself.

No venture capital. No pivot-to-AI storyline. Just steady growth in an industry most founders would dismiss as boring.

And that’s precisely the point.

Founded in 1975 as a joint venture between MacMillan Bloedel and two UK firms, Canusa started as a small Vancouver office sourcing plywood from Southeast Asia. Today, it spans 16 warehouses across Canada and the US, with a global supply network of 100+ mills and nearly 50 staff, including an overseas team in Suzhou, China.

This wasn’t hypergrowth. It was deliberate, disciplined scaling.

“We’re not in the business of growing for growth’s sake,” McLaren said. “Our focus has always been on finding the right products, building the right relationships, and adding value where it makes sense for us and our customers.”

McLaren joined Canusa in 2012 after working for competitor BlueLinx. By 2017, he and CEO Jeevan Manhas completed a management buyout—a transition that reflected Canusa’s culture of empowering new leaders early.

“The founders were very open-handed,” McLaren recalled. “They wanted us to come with them, meet the suppliers, build relationships. We’re doing the same thing now with the next generation.”

Operating in a high-volume, low-margin world, Canusa has little room for error. Its value lies in absorbing complexity for customers: financing overseas shipments months in advance, storing inventory across North America, and delivering just-in-time so buyers don’t tie up cash or space.

“When you’re importing from around the world, you pay for it when it leaves the mill,” McLaren explained. “It can take four months to hit our warehouses. That’s a big financial commitment. We take that on so our customers don’t have to.”

The result? Reliability as a premium service. “If you can show customers over a year that you deliver on time 95 to 100% of the time, they’ll pay more for that,” he said.

For founders in any industry, it’s a reminder: complexity is inevitable—own it for your customers and turn it into a moat.

Plywood may seem static, but Canusa has innovated strategically when markets demanded it. When antidumping duties hit Chinese hardwood plywood in 2017, the company launched Premcore® Plus and Kingcore®—new products meeting domestic-grade specs while navigating trade barriers.

“We’re not chasing trends,” McLaren said. “We’re solving problems. It’s about understanding what customers need and helping mills engineer products that deliver.”

This kind of value engineering happens constantly. “You’d be surprised how many variables go into a plywood panel—species, log availability, performance specs. It’s a simple product on the surface, but there’s a lot under the hood,” he added.

Over five decades, Canusa has weathered recessions, currency swings, supply chain breakdowns, and global trade wars.

“Change is constant,” McLaren said. “You can’t get lost in the anxiety of what’s coming next. You have to embrace it and deal with it quickly. Otherwise, you’ll get left behind.”

When COVID sent shipping costs soaring and container availability plummeting, Canusa worked closely with suppliers and customers to find alternatives.

“You can’t always forecast the next disruption,” McLaren admitted. “But you can build a culture that’s ready to pivot.”

Perhaps Canusa’s most powerful insight for founders is its approach to leadership. Instead of hoarding knowledge, the original leaders embedded succession into the culture.

“If those guys hadn’t empowered us back then, this business wouldn’t still be here,” McLaren said. “We’re doing the same now—bringing new people in, giving them opportunities to lead, and setting them up to do it even better than us.”

It’s a lesson for startups: succession isn’t a “later” problem—it’s a survival strategy.

At first glance, Canusa’s story feels miles from SaaS dashboards and pitch decks. But its quiet mastery of scale, adaptability, and culture is exactly what many tech companies lack.

“Fifty years in this business is proof that a steady hand and strong partnerships can go a long way,” McLaren said.

In a world obsessed with disruption, Canusa shows the power of mastering the boring stuff.