When Johnathan joined Morelli Designers , an industrial design agency founded in 1981, the wheels began to turn faster. So much so that clients told the president to "tie his hat to this little guy who moves air!" Michel Morelli viewed favorably the recruit's determination to breathe a wind of youth and change into his company.

Wanting to move forward

When he joined Morelli in 2007, then known for its railway design (notably the prestigious GoldLeaf of the Rocky Mountaineer), Johnathan worked as a designer for a Charlevoix train. The youngster was motivated and quickly took over the management of the project. More and more of the company's operations were entrusted to him by Michel, who was delighted with his successes and the impact on sales. The young man got his hands dirty: industrial furniture design, manufacturing, sports, residential, urban. "I like it when things work well," says Jonathan, with a frank look. "I am focused on solutions and success, so I immediately organized the work and placed people to be as efficient as possible." His commitment and passion did not go unnoticed. In 2013, the boss offered to buy shares in Morelli to continue growing the company. He also mentioned the possibility of a future succession in the conversation.

A thought process

“I hadn’t gotten to that point in my head,” Johnathan confides, quite frankly. “We started to look into the takeover. Our strengths and personalities were complementary, but I couldn’t see myself taking over alone.” Thanks to the support offered by the Centre de transfert d’entreprise du Québec (CTEQ), the outlines of the transfer were better defined, but Johnathan was still thinking about it.

In 2015, Michel gave him carte blanche. “He trusted me,” says the buyer. “He told me: act as if it were your business.” Morelli Designers was officially for sale at the time, and Johnathan was looking for a partner. The CTEQ put him in touch with several potential entrepreneurs, but he remained undecided. “At 5 a.m. every day, until 7:30 a.m., I was trying to build my ideas, to think about where I would go with the company if I took over the helm,” he recalls. “My basement was covered in diagrams. My wife thought I had gone crazy.” Johnathan surrounded himself, asked questions, and read a lot about innovation and business development.

When a blockage becomes a solution

Standing in the doorway before leaving the office one evening, the two men looked each other in the eye. “We had just learned that two of our clients had failed to market their product,” Johnathan says. “What could we do to prevent them from failing and losing them along the way? I said to Michel: we should be able to better support them upstream and during all the stages of product development so that this doesn’t happen again.” Johnathan had just put his finger on the problem and his foot on the accelerator.

“It’s silly when you think about it, but that’s when things started to unblock,” he says. “Innovation, development, deployment: these three key words were plastered on my walls. To my worried wife, I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, but this is going to define our future.’ I was right. Today, these concepts define our company mission.” On December 23, 2016, Johnathan Côté confirmed his intention to buy Morelli Designers alone. “I had mapped out my path and gained confidence in myself. I knew where I was going, my vision was clear. Michel then told me, ‘I’m happy that you’re taking over the reins alone. I knew that in your time, you would succeed.’” The transaction was finalized in December 2017.

The new face of Morelli

The new CEO has developed a business model around the credo "from opportunity to market" that he has called the Morelli global experience . "I act as a bridge," he illustrates. "I connect marketing and sales teams with those in creation and design. I support companies to help them position themselves in the market and align their strategies, from innovation to product development and marketing. It is a new consulting service offering in innovation strategy. I even give lectures on design intelligence, among other things at the Master's in Innovation Management at the École de technologie supérieure."

Johnathan has surrounded himself with a solid and multidisciplinary team that reflects his vision. To transform his company and make it flourish, he says he owes a lot to those around him who helped him clarify his vision and make it a reality. Over the past two years, he has become a private incubator himself. “My behag ( big hairy audacious goal ) is to get involved in business deployment projects with which we have a good fit,” says this lover of challenges. “I want to be the one who fills in the missing pieces on the path to commercialization. Together, we can prevent our customers from failing, and that’s the key point that ignites me. I want to be part of the solution and participate in the success.”