'Our team is here in Canada helping just Canada with a warehouse and all the support needed for Canadians,' says marketing manager
When it comes to keeping Canada’s sprawling commercial and industrial spaces comfortable, Nick Georgescu believes there’s no substitute for going big. As Canada Marketing Manager for Big Ass Fans, Georgescu is on a mission to raise awareness of thermal comfort at a time when warm summers and new regulations are putting heat stress in the spotlight.
Founded in Kentucky in 1999 as the High Volume Low Speed Fan Company, Big Ass Fans got its memorable moniker not from a marketing agency, but from its earliest customers: dairy farmers. “The farmers started wanting big ass fans. And that’s what they started calling them back in the day,” Georgescu explains. The name officially changed around 2003, cementing a brand identity that’s as bold as the products themselves.
The company’s original mission—keeping livestock cool—quickly expanded. “From there, it was just big spaces really made sense to have fans to cool them. So, we see them a lot in warehouses, manufacturing facilities, hangars, garages, even public spaces,” says Georgescu. The company has since evolved into a global operation, now active in over 181 countries, with dedicated offices in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Australia, and Singapore.
In Canada, Big Ass Fans is focusing not just on moving air, but on addressing the growing challenge of workplace heat stress. This year, Georgescu and his team attended the Canadian Safety Summit to connect with health and safety professionals. “For us, it was an awareness play about, hey, Big Ass Fans are in Canada,” he says. The timing is critical: Ontario’s proposed Bill 36 would introduce new regulations around workplace thermal comfort, like standards already enforced in some U.S. states.
Georgescu points out that fans are not only about cooling in the summer, but also about circulating heat in winter, creating a year-round solution for large, hard-to-regulate spaces. “We’re basically efficient air mixers,” he says. The company leverages computational fluid dynamics to map out each client’s space, identifying hot and cold zones and designing custom airflow solutions. “We don’t essentially just pick fans and place them in spaces. We model spaces with everything that’s in the space—with the obstructions, with the temperature, with the seasonal considerations—and we essentially map in fans and show you how they perform in that space,” he explains.
Beyond technology, Big Ass Fans is keen to stress its Canadian presence. “Big Ass Fans Canada and our team is here in Canada helping just Canada with a warehouse and all the support needed for Canadians,” Georgescu says. The company offers on-site visits, local engineering input, and a showroom in Oakville, Ontario.
Georgescu is also proud of the company’s commitment to research, noting that Big Ass Fans has the world’s only R&D facility dedicated to large fans and actively participates in industry-standard boards such as AMCA and ASHRAE.
And for those wondering just how big a “big ass fan” can be, Georgescu has the answer: “We’ve actually got the biggest ass fan available on the market. It’s actually a 30-foot diameter fan,” he says, though he cautions it’s only suitable for the largest spaces.
As Canadian workplaces look to meet new comfort and safety standards, Big Ass Fans is positioning itself as a partner that brings both global expertise and local support—along with some of the world’s most memorable engineering.
