As Carzan has grown, we've had more opportunities to lower our costs. Some of them are pretty significant.
We've been given the opportunity to buy grass-finished beef from overseas for less than we're paying for Canadian beef. We know we could source our pouches and labels overseas for less. The boxes we ship your orders in could be cheaper, and our retail display shippers could probably be made overseas for pennies on the dollar compared to what we pay to have them made here.
If we really wanted to chase the lowest possible cost, we could probably find a cheaper overseas source for almost everything that goes into making and selling our jerky.
But that's not how we want to build Carzan.
Almost everything inside a bag of Carzan, everything it's packaged in and even the box it gets shipped in is Canadian. We're a Canadian beef jerky company using Canadian grass-finished beef, Canadian honey and Canadian-made packaging wherever possible. Our jerky is made here. Our pouches, labels, boxes and retail displays are made here too.
There are obviously some exceptions. Certain spices simply aren't grown in Canada, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. Those have to be imported. But they make up a very small portion of what goes into our products. When something can reasonably be sourced here, our first choice is to source it here.
And yes, sometimes that costs us more.
Supporting Canadian Has to Work Both Ways
We talk a lot about supporting Canadian businesses, especially over the last few years. As a small Canadian company, we're incredibly grateful for that support. Every time someone chooses a bag of Carzan over a multinational brand, orders from our website or picks us up at their local store, that purchase helps us continue building this company here in Saskatchewan.
But we've always felt that if we're going to ask Canadians to support us, we should be willing to do the same thing.
It would be pretty hypocritical for us to talk about the importance of shopping Canadian while quietly sourcing everything we possibly could from the lowest bidder overseas. We understand why businesses do it. Cost matters, especially for a small company, and there are products and ingredients that simply aren't available in Canada. We're not against importing things.
We just don't believe the cheapest option should automatically be the best option.
When we spend a little more to buy packaging from a Canadian company, that money supports another Canadian business and the people who work there. The same thing happens when we buy boxes, labels, printing, honey or beef. Those businesses employ Canadians, buy from other Canadian businesses and spend money in their own communities.
The person buying a bag of Carzan isn't only supporting Carzan. That purchase allows us to turn around and support a whole chain of other businesses here at home.
That's something that matters to us.
The Beef Is Probably the Best Example
Beef is one of the biggest costs in what we make, so when you're given an opportunity to buy grass-finished beef from overseas for less money, you obviously look at the numbers.
For us, though, this goes deeper than a spreadsheet.
We're a fourth-generation Saskatchewan ranch family. We grew up in the cattle industry. We've raised cattle, worked the land and spent our lives around the people who produce beef in this country. That background is a huge part of why Carzan exists in the first place.
We couldn't imagine building a Canadian beef jerky company around that story and then quietly switching to imported beef because we could make a few more points of margin.
So our jerky is made with Canadian grass-finished beef. It's not necessarily the cheapest way for us to make jerky, but it's the way that makes sense for who we are and what we're trying to build.
The same thinking carries through the rest of the business. If a Canadian company can make our packaging, we'd rather buy it from them. If someone here can make our boxes or print our labels, we'd rather give them the business. If we can buy an ingredient from a Canadian producer, that's where we'd rather spend our money.
Local Matters. Canadian Matters Too.
We've always believed in supporting local businesses, but "local" doesn't have to mean only the businesses within 20 minutes of your house.
We're proud to support businesses here in Saskatchewan whenever we can, but we're also proud to buy from companies across Canada. A Canadian manufacturer in Ontario, a packaging supplier in Alberta or a producer in another province might not technically be local to us, but the money is still supporting Canadian jobs, Canadian families and the Canadian economy.
For a country as big as ours, we think that matters.
None of this means every Canadian business has to buy Canadian at any cost, or that consumers should feel guilty every time they buy something made somewhere else. That's not realistic, and it's not what we're trying to say. Canada is part of a global economy, and there are plenty of things we need that simply aren't produced here.
It's about making the choice when you actually have one.
We have those choices all the time. Sometimes choosing Canadian costs us a little more. Sometimes it costs us a lot more. There will always be someone who can show us a spreadsheet explaining how much money we could save if we sourced something differently.
That's okay.
We're trying to build a strong Canadian business, but we also want Carzan to contribute to a stronger Canadian food industry, agricultural industry and small-business economy. We don't think those two goals have to compete with each other.
More Than a Maple Leaf on the Package
It's easy to put a maple leaf on something. What matters more to us is what happens behind it.
Where did the beef come from? Where was the product made? Who made the packaging? Who printed the labels? Who made the boxes? And when you spend a dollar with that company, where does that dollar go next?
For us, being a Canadian brand should mean more than having a Canadian address and putting a maple leaf on our packaging. It should show up in the decisions we make behind the scenes too, including the decisions our customers may never see.
We can't promise that absolutely everything we ever buy will come from Canada. There are ingredients and materials that aren't produced here, and there may be times when a Canadian option simply doesn't exist.
But when we have the choice, we're going to keep looking to Canadian businesses first.
Because supporting Canadian shouldn't just be something we print on our packaging or ask our customers to do. It's something we believe we have a responsibility to do ourselves.
So when you choose Carzan, thank you. You're supporting our family and the business we're building here in Saskatchewan. But you're also helping us support the Canadian ranchers, producers, manufacturers, printers, packaging companies and other businesses that help us make what we make.
We think that's worth paying a little more for.
Snack like it matters.
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