Rob Sim smiles like a Cheshire cat as he holds up the red-stamped Mandarin document that permits his 25-year-old Toronto-based Sim Video to officially open a branch in Beijing, host city of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

‘This is great timing,’ beams Sim, president of Sim Group, one of Canada’s most reputable video equipment rental houses. ‘We got our ‘WOFE’ today, and just signed our first client this morning.’

Pronounced ‘woof-ee,’ the acronym stands for ‘wholly owned foreign enterprise,’ meaning Sim’s new China operation is a completely independent company with no Chinese partners.

NBC is Sim Video China’s first official client, having just reserved equipment for the Today Show, which will shoot on location this month in Tiananmen Square, now infamous for the historic student uprising in China’s capital in 1989.

Expansion into China is also a historic moment for a man who is still proud to have his growing camera empire called a ‘mom and pop’ operation. He cofounded Sim Video with his wife and partner Peggy Sim (as the company’s controller) with just one camera and the company office in their basement apartment in 1982.

Sim comes across as both humble and genuine, especially with his trademark candidness, even when talking about his company’s expansion.

‘There was never a brilliant master plan behind it,’ he chuckles. ‘Meeting the demand is really what it’s all about. And by doing good work, the demand increases, and as the demand increases, we invest in more inventory. It’s a bit of a rat race.’

Sim Group now has more than 200 cameras, including state-of-the-art digital favorites like the Thomson Viper FilmStream Camera, which costs between $250,000 and $300,000. The company increases its inventory by 25% annually and employs 55 people in six offices – Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax, Hollywood, San Francisco and China.

The company’s who’s who client list includes the Rolling Stones (Betacam SP’s for the Toronto press junket) and Canadian broadcasters and producers such as Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting, Decode Entertainment, CTV, Citytv, Rhombus Media and Insight Productions, producer of ratings-buster Canadian Idol. Sim also has cameras on CBC’s new hit series, Little Mosque on the Prairie, among others.

Sim believes the company’s stellar reputation worldwide is a direct result of cutting-edge equipment, a service policy that is ’24/7,’ and ‘consistency, because no one on set likes surprises.’ He is also convinced that ‘honesty, integrity and trust’ are vital when developing long-term business relationships in a suspicious industry. Every camera is checked by engineers before it goes out the door. He’d bet his name on it.

Sim’s new China operation is a perfect example of how the Sim Group ticks. The modest two-man debut is headed up by Canadian Noah Weinzweig, who’s been learning the ropes – including the tricky language – in Beijing since ’95, and who has been involved with Sim for about 18 months. He e-mailed Rob Sim personally about market opportunities in China and got the ball rolling. Sim liked what he saw.

‘Our mission in China is pretty simple,’ says Sim. ‘It’s to provide western-style service and equipment primarily to foreign clients. We’re looking mainly to American, Canadian, German, British, French…foreigners who want to shoot in China.’

As for Sim equipment in Asia: ‘It will be all HD; we will not be buying anything but HD in China,’ says Sim. And once again, the initial investment will be small and the measured growth will be based on market demand.

‘We’re looking at an initial investment of $1 million,’ says Sim. ‘It’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things. There’s always some risk, but what you do is try and minimize the risk by taking it slow and easy. So the idea is to buy some equipment and see how it goes, and if the demand is there, buy some more.’

The China office is already using the coveted Viper camera and Avid post systems that Vancouver-based Reunion Pictures used on the miniseries Son of the Dragon (starring David Carradine) and Marco Polo, which shot in China in the last two years. Sim Video has been on the ground in China for about two years now, learning where the pitfalls hide and how to circumvent red tape.

‘There’s an Eastern philosophical approach to things [in China], where to admit you can’t do something is to admit failure,’ explains Sim. ‘Son of the Dragon is a good example of that. Reunion would call up the local supplier for a camera crane and say ‘we need a crane on Tuesday,’ and they’d say ‘okay.’ And then Tuesday comes around and there’s no crane. So Reunion calls up and says ‘where’s the crane’? And they say, ‘well, we don’t have one.’ So Reunion says, ‘well why didn’t you tell me that last week?’ And the answer is: ‘well I couldn’t.” Consequently, Sim Video China will also offer ‘all the things that are common sense,’ that North Americans take for granted.

However, Sim’s China office is not taking anything for granted marketwise.

‘We’re not putting all our eggs in the Olympic basket,’ Sim continues. ‘In 2010 there’s a World Expo in Beijing as well. And more and more people are shooting over there. ‘

Sim may not be a gambler, but his company was a risk-taker and a leader, buying vanguard HD equipment a decade ago.

‘We got into HD in 1998,’ Sim recollects. ‘The first show we did was Lexx with Salter Street, a German/Canadian coproduction shot in Halifax. Our first true 24p series was Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict in 2001 (shot in Toronto). That was the first episodic in 24p HD (as opposed to 30 frames per second).

‘For Earth: Final Conflict, we were using handheld prototype cameras from Sony, right off the boat. The paint was still wet, and we had some struggles on that series, but it worked,’ Sim recalls. ‘The production was happy with the quality and the producer, John Calvert, was also happy with the savings, and he’s shot [almost] nothing in film since.’

Another key Sim Video project was the 2005 Last Mysteries of the Titanic documentary by James Cameron. ‘We provided everything above surface,’ explains Sim. ‘It’s the biggest installation we’ve ever done. We built the whole control room in the hold of the ship,’ a Russian vessel called Keldysh.

Twelve underwater cameras fed signals up through fiber-optic cables to the Sim control room, designed and controlled by crackerjack freelance engineer Robert Brunelle, hired by Sim.

Sim Video lands interesting contracts like Titanic because the company has a stellar reputation that’s been building for 25 years.

‘Back when Rob was in his basement, and I was a freelance cameraman, I used to rent from Rob,’ says IATSE 667 business representative Rick Perotto, who now represents all cinematographers in Ontario and eastern Canada. ‘You could always count on Rob to be helpful. He made things work. No matter how big or small your budget, all Rob’s clients matter to him.’