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How Cash Management and Innovation Helped Groupe Lacasse Increase Efficiency

By Diane Amato

Published on October 9, 2026 • 8 Min Read

TLDR

  • Groupe Lacasse exports more than 70 per cent of its products to the U.S., making changing trade conditions and foreign exchange (FX) management everyday business considerations.

  • A thoughtful, diversified approach to cash management gives Lacasse greater visibility and flexibility.

  • A state-of-the-art factory in the small town of Saint-Pie, Quebec, is helping the company increase efficiency and output while reducing pressure on hiring.

  • Innovation extends beyond technology: a new approach to sales is changing how Lacasse goes to market and creating new sources of demand.

Imagine the biggest storage system you can. Now imagine it 100 times bigger

That’s how Maxime Vallières, CFO at Groupe Lacasse describes the automated storage system at their state-of-the-art factory in Saint-Pie, Quebec.

Affectionately known by employees as “Goldorak”– a nod to an animated Japanese series — the massive vertical storage system sits at the heart of a much bigger investment in Lacasse 2.0, the company’s highly automated manufacturing facility. And the story behind that investment is as much about people and preparation as it is about machinery.

For a manufacturer based in a small Quebec town, finding enough workers to support growth had become an ongoing challenge. Rather than allow labour availability to limit capacity, Lacasse invested in automation – modernizing its manufacturing operations while increasing the amount it could produce. And although demand has not followed the path the company expected when the investment was made, Vallières remains confident in the logic behind it.

“The assumption was sound: we needed to grow, so we needed to be able to manufacture more,” he says. “When business comes back to where it was in 2018 and 2019, we’ll be ready.” That readiness has become something of a theme for Groupe Lacasse: invest before capacity becomes a constraint, understand the numbers and build enough flexibility into the business to respond as conditions change.

When your biggest market is across the border

For Groupe Lacasse, the U.S. isn’t simply an export market. It is central to the business. In fact, more than 70 per cent of Lacasse products are sold to customers in the U.S., with the remainder sold through dealers in Canada. The company also serves government customers on both sides of the border.

That cross-border presence has been an important part of the company’s growth. It also brings changing trade conditions directly into day-to-day business decisions. For Vallières, one of the biggest challenges is not knowing exactly how those conditions will evolve.

“The biggest factor affecting us is uncertainty,” he says. Customers may have projects planned and quotes in hand, but some have delayed capital spending while waiting for greater visibility into the economic environment. The result, he says, is not necessarily a drop in sales, but slower realization of demand already visible in the company’s pipeline.

Forward planning therefore becomes particularly important. Vallières looks at how changing trade measures could affect Lacasse over several horizons – three months, six months, even two years – and translates those potential effects into implications for the company’s P&L and cash.

Foreign exchange is another everyday consideration. Lacasse prices much of its U.S. business in U.S. dollars and manages that exposure using forwards, while also building exchange-rate assumptions into its margins.

Because a significant portion of U.S. business is quoted on a project-by-project basis, the finance team can also incorporate the prevailing exchange rate into each deal. Exchange-rate assumptions are reviewed annually as part of budgeting, but monitored much more frequently.

Neither trade conditions nor foreign exchange rates can be predicted with certainty. Vallières’ focus is on giving the business enough visibility and time to adjust as they change.

Go deeper: Closing the Gap on FX Exposure: Best Practices for Your Finance Team

Knowing where the cash is – and keeping it moving

The same focus on visibility plays out in how Lacasse manages cash.

The company operates with an asset-based line of credit, with a borrowing base that can change from week to week. To understand how much capacity may be available on the line, Vallières needs a current picture of what has come into the business and what needs to go out.

His team once pulled that information twice a week. Today, they may look at it intraday. “We need that information faster to be able to forecast next week and the weeks coming up,” he says.

Lacasse also uses several tools to manage the timing of cash. Some U.S. customers still pay by cheque, so the company uses lockboxes in both Canada and the U.S. to shorten the time it takes those payments to reach the business. Vallières has also shifted more vendor spending onto commercial cards, extending the time before cash leaves the business while maintaining controls around how those cards are used.

The company used to operate with just a few cards. Today, there are eight to ten, with limits set by card and expense type, which allows Vallières to decentralize some spending without giving up control.

These tools help Lacasse create a clearer picture of its cash position and more flexibility around timing – particularly valuable when both demand and borrowing capacity can shift quickly.

Innovation isn’t confined to the factory floor

Goldorak may be the most visible sign of innovation at Groupe Lacasse. But the company is also rethinking how it sells.

Historically, Lacasse did more of what Vallières describes as commodity business: a customer needs a desk, Lacasse ships a desk. While that business remains important, the company’s new sales leadership has begun positioning Lacasse more deliberately as a project-based company – one capable of taking on a broader project scope and working more closely with the architecture and design community.

This shift in positioning opens the door to a different kind of opportunity. Rather than relying primarily on smaller individual orders, Lacasse is pursuing larger projects where its ability to provide seating, steel and wood furniture across multiple categories becomes an advantage.

Vallières sees the production investment and the sales strategy as complementary. The factory was built with additional capacity – and the project-based approach creates another way to put that capacity to work.

Innovation doesn’t always mean adding new technology. Sometimes, it means looking at the capabilities a business already has and finding a different way to bring them to market.

Preparation includes the right banking relationships

Lacasse’s approach to banking follows much the same philosophy: solve for friction early. For Vallières, that starts with building the right relationships before they’re urgently needed and knowing where to turn when a new challenge arises.


“I’ve worked with several Canadian banks over my career. What stands out at RBC is the teams. They don’t work in silos – people from different groups coordinate so that everything runs as easily as possible for us.”

That collaborative approach spans several areas of Lacasse’s banking relationship. RBC supported the company with its asset-based lending structure and has worked closely with Lacasse on its U.S. receivables and cross-border banking needs. Lacasse maintains a legacy U.S. bank account, for example, but RBC has built cross-border services around it so funds can move smoothly between the two banking relationships. Vallières describes the process as seamless: he approves payments and the transfers flow, with predictable timing when money needs to move between banks.

The true value, however, extends beyond any single solution. “The RBC team goes looking for solutions,” Vallières says. “When we bring them something unusual, they work at it until they find a way to approach it.” For Vallières, knowing he has a team that understands the business gives him somewhere to turn when the next challenge arises.

Putting the pieces together

“Commercial furniture seems simple, but it’s actually complex,” Vallières says.

The same could be said for the business behind it. A finished desk, table or storage system may look straightforward. But designing, engineering and producing it requires materials, machinery, people, inventory, financing, logistics, currencies and customers to come together – often across borders.

Lacasse can’t control every variable around that process – trade conditions will change, exchange rates will move and customers may delay projects. What it can control is how prepared it is to respond – investing in production capacity, maintaining a current view of cash, managing foreign exchange deliberately and continually rethinking how it goes to market. Complexity doesn’t necessarily require a complicated response. With the right preparation, information and support in place, the pieces can be much easier to assemble.

Transform FX risk into opportunity

Doing business in any foreign currency can be challenging—and the timing of your currency conversions can often have a major impact on your business results.

RBC Treasury Specialists can help turn currency exposure into a managed variable and minimize foreign exchange risk when buying or selling outside of Canada, regardless of the currency.

Talk to your RBC Relationship Manager.

Visit the Foreign Exchange for Business page for payment tools and solutions.

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