Business Disruptors: Ted Fox, Fox Plumbing Heating Mechanical Electrical

Hello and welcome to Business Disruptors, the H-PAC Magazine production.

I'm Doug Picklick, the editor of H-PAC Magazine, and we're happy to be here today speaking with Ted Fox, the owner of Fox Plumbing, Heating, Cooling Electrical, based in Vernon, BC.

Clearly, you're a family-owned business.

specializing in the residential home services industry, right? So hi, Ted, and welcome to Business Disruptors.

Thanks, Doug.

It's nice to be here, and yeah, thank you.

That was a great intro.

Thanks.

Well, okay, so Ted, let me know if I have this right and fill in the details where you can.

The business started, and it was started by both you and your dad, Ted Fox Sr., in 1999.

So about 27 years ago.

And to be clear, at that point, it was Fox and Sons plumbing, heating.

I don't know if it was still cooling and electrical way back then, because the website is still foxandsons.ca.

I noticed that.

So maybe you can, let's go back even further and start.

So was your dad in the trades since he was a young man?

yeah yes that's a that's a good question he he um was he left the he was a faller he was like a um first off he was doing mining exploration and then he became a follower and he was ran a falling company for a number of years way up north and um he ended up leaving that life to try and get something where he could be home more and went into to get his plumbing tickets and stuff in his early 30s um And so, yeah, so he definitely kicked off the plumbing trade for us, for sure.

And then my older brother got into plumbing as well, went and did his own – chased his own dreams in Calgary.

My dad went and worked for – he started a little plumbing company in Merritt, B.C., and then left that and went to work for the utilities, for – bc gas at the time it was called which is now fortis and um he had worked there for years and years and then yeah about 1990 it was 1998 we kind of sat around a table and dreamed up this company and in 99 we incorporated it um and ran it out of ran it out of like we lived together at the time in a house and we ran it out of the garage there And, you know, started, we weren't necessarily chucking a truck, but we were two mans in a van kind of thing.

Okay.

Well, so to back up, so your start.

So clearly you've grown up like your whole life in Vernon.

That's the family was born and raised.

Yeah.

So I kind of grew up all over the province because when I was growing up, my dad was working for the utility and we went wherever they sent us.