Great Customer Service + Great Products = Success for BoiFor

When a young Marc LePage left banking in 1993 and started working for Maritonex, an Eastern Canadian distributor in the forest products industry, he admits he didn’t have a clue about sawmills and their equipment needs. But over the next several years, he made every effort to learn as much as he could.

He also treated his customers with a personal touch, paying close attention to their needs. That earned him loyalty and trust that have lasted for more than two decades.

“Customers were asking me questions when I started. I didn’t initially know the answers, but I said I would get back to them. And I did. That helped me build strong relationships with them,” LePage says.

“If they had a problem or issue, I fixed it. I was always there. Present in the flesh. It gave me confidence so that today I can reach anyone in the mill.”

At the time of our interview, 25 years later, LePage was still providing the same level of service to the same sawmills and secondary manufacturers, including makers of flooring, windows, and furniture.

He also serves many of the same contacts, though their roles have changed a lot since those early years. People who were once project engineers or in entry-level roles have moved up to become vice presidents, general managers, and in some cases, owners of their companies.

LePage’s role changed, too. When Maritonex owner Jacques Marion retired in 2009, LePage and Marion’s son David bought the company. They renamed it BoiFor, a blend of the French words for wood and forest. LePage is president of BoiFor, based in McMasterville, Quebec, and David Marion is vice president.

BoiFor has a three-part mission. First, it makes parts for the debarking industry, using two subcontracted machine shops to produce them. Second, it represents U.S. and Canadian companies in Eastern Canada, including Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. These companies include Edem, Rawlings Manufacturing, and MDI Metal Detectors. And third, BoiFor buys products from U.S. and Canadian companies such as Wagner Meters and resells them exclusively in Eastern Canada.

R&D

To better serve the forest industry, BoiFor’s research and development department had a patent pending at the time of our interview for an improved debarking/harvesting spike. According to BoiFor, it could save each mill roughly $400,000 a year by reducing debarking fiber damage.

“We’re trying to reduce the fiber damage that goes on in the sawmill industry. Every time you do an action to the wood, you’re damaging it. That includes cutting the tree, sending the logs to the mill, sending them to a debarker, removing the bark, having the wood go to machines like canters, and so on,” says LePage.

“Debarking is the place where you damage the wood the most, but you still need to remove the bark. When you are creating fiber damage, that good fiber falls in the conveyors with the bark. Since the bark’s value is about four times less than the chip’s value, you don’t want to add fiber into your bark. You want the fiber to stick on the log so you can make good chips or lumber out of it,” he adds.

BoiFor studied the feed rolls used on harvesting machines and redesigned the spikes. According to the company, the new design can cut fiber damage by nearly 8%, and each 1% of fiber damage costs a mill about $50,000 a year.

Summer testing of the new spike design on debarkers went well. But BoiFor said the real test would come in winter, when debarking is harder. Fiber damage runs about 5% in summer but can jump as high as 30% in winter, when the bark is frozen to the fiber.

At the time, BoiFor had been working with two companies for two years to test the new design and planned to sell the technology once testing was complete.

BoiFor’s Strategy for Success

Together, Maritonex and BoiFor have been in business for nearly 40 years. LePage says the company’s strategy for success comes down to two things: close personal contact with customers and excellent products from its suppliers.

“Human contact, meaning being on site so customers get to know and trust you, as well as paying close attention to their needs, are extremely important to building close customer relationships,” he adds.

“The ultimate compliment is when a customer calls me and says, ‘Marc, I know, you don’t sell this product, but can you get it for me?’ They’ll call me because they trust me.”

“Customers also like to work with people they can rely on,” says LePage. “When they buy from me, they know I’ll still be representing the same products and the same company in two, three, five years or more. That’s not always the case with some salesmen because they change the company they work for every couple years.”

Offering products from companies that lead their markets is another of BoiFor’s strengths. In several cases, it has represented or sold the same companies’ products for 25, 30, or more years.

“A perfect example is Wagner Meters from Rogue River, Oregon. Wagner is a leader in moisture measurement systems,” says LePage.

“We offer all of Wagner’s handheld wood moisture meters, including the L620 digital and L622 digital recording moisture meter, the L722 lumber stack probe, the MMI1100 and MMC series. We also sell their MC4000 In-Kiln Moisture Measurement System and their Omega In-Line Moisture Measurement System that are used in several industries, such as sawmills and secondary markets like flooring, windows, doors, and furniture.”

“The relationship between Maritonex/BoiFor and Wagner began more than 30 years ago. It was an immediate win-win situation for both of our companies,” says LePage.

Maritonex could offer its customers reliable, non-invasive moisture meters at a time when mills and secondary manufacturers estimated wood moisture content (MC) from differences in weight.

Wagner, in turn, signed an exclusive distributorship agreement with a company that could communicate with French-speaking customers in Eastern Canada and knew the needs of Canadian customers.

“With Wagner, we have a company that offers our customers a needed product. They need to read the MC of wood, so we are answering a demand. And we’re also offering our customers a well-built, quality product that doesn’t damage the wood and which accurately reads the MC of the wood.

“In Canada, we don’t care where the product comes from, be it the U.S., Germany, or some other country. What matters is the product is good, the company provides good service, and the price is right. We get that with Wagner,” he says.

“To give you an idea of how good their products are, my first sale in 1993 when I entered the company was a Wagner in-line moisture meter. Today, 25 years later, their moisture meter is still functioning for my customer. Wagner has since come out with more advanced systems, but this unit, which is no longer manufactured, is still in top condition.”

Over the years, LePage says, BoiFor has worked with Wagner Meters on several product improvements. For example, BoiFor encouraged Wagner to move its meters from analog to digital, switch the L722 lumber stack probe from plastic to aluminum to prevent breakage, and fix battery casing problems on the L612. BoiFor also had Wagner improve its temperature compensation probe to measure wood temperature more accurately at very high and very low temperatures.

Collaborative Partnerships

Because Wagner responds to BoiFor’s feedback, its products keep improving, which gives BoiFor’s customers a better experience. The same is true of the other companies BoiFor works with.

“While we can attribute much of our success to providing consistently excellent customer service and support, the other half of the equation is providing superior products for our customers. This happens because of our collaborative partnerships with outstanding companies like Edem, Rawlings Manufacturing, MDI Metal Detectors, and Wagner Meters.

“They are the leaders, the gold standard in their respective markets. Together, we are passionate about making progress happen for our industry and our customers,” LePage says.

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Ron Smith

As Sales Manager for Wagner Meters, Ron has more than 35 years of experience with instrumentation and measurement systems in different industries.  In previous positions, he has served as Regional Sales Manager, Product and Projects Manager, and Sales Manager for manufacturers involved in measurement instrumentation.

Last updated on October 9th, 2026