John Loewen

Before founding Icon Technologies Limited in a two-car garage and building the company’s first thermoforming machine from scratch, John Loewen spent a few years out of high school working at Canadian RV OEM supplier Triple E RV. At a building down the street from Icon’s current headquarters in Manitoba, Canada, Loewen worked in various Triple E RV departments, including fiberglass, thermoforming, mold making and product design.

By the time Loewen started Icon in 1998, he had a little thermoforming experience from studying, researching and working at Triple E RV. He grew the company from him and one other employee, all with no sales team or manufacturing representative agents. “My philosophy is, if you have the right marketing, advertising, and customer service, you do not need a sales team,” Loewen said of how he grew his leadership and management team in the past decade.

If Loewen had to pick one thing he is most proud of since starting Icon, he said it is that the company has become an easily recognizable brand across the RV market.

“Whether it is consumer, dealer, distributor or OEM, our brand is probably recognized across all those channels,” Loewen said. But he is proud of more than just that. “It is a lot of things: it is the management team I was able to put together, it is the customers willing to participate in the dream I had and the bankers who are willing to back the enterprise and the vision behind it.”