From Military Expeditions to HVAC eCommerce: How Isabel Cloutier Is Building Digital Strategy at Innovair Solutions

In B2B eCommerce, digital transformation rarely follows a straight line. Manufacturers and distributors face a layered set of challenges: complex product catalogs, highly technical buyers, multiple sales channels, and an uneven pace of adoption across departments. The leaders who navigate those challenges most effectively are often the ones with the most unconventional paths to their roles. Isabel Cloutier, E-Commerce Manager at Innovair Solutions, a Quebec-based HVAC manufacturer and distributor operating across Canada, the United States and LATAM, is a case in point.

Cloutier spent years as a seasonal tourism worker and part-time member of the Canadian Forces before moving into manufacturing, customer service, and eventually project management. She did not take a digital marketing course until she was already in an e-commerce role. She read product specification sheets during her sons’ early-morning hockey practices. She is now leading digital commerce initiatives across a multi-entity group, piloting AI-driven content tools, and building a platform designed to guide technical installers through complex purchasing decisions online. Her story reflects something broader happening across the industry: B2B eCommerce is increasingly being shaped by people who learned to solve hard problems in environments that had nothing to do with commerce at all.

A Foundation Built Outdoors

When asked what connects her Canadian Forces background to her work today, Cloutier does not hesitate. “It’s the leadership that I’ve learned through all of those years in the Canadian Forces,” she says. She joined as a young cadet at 12, and at the time of this conversation, she is in her 21st year of service, currently in a part-time capacity mentoring cadets between the ages of 12 and 18.

Before moving into manufacturing, Cloutier studied to become an ecotourism guide and wanted to pursue a career in high-mountain guiding. That trajectory, combined with her military experience, gave her a particular way of framing professional challenges.

“There’s always a solution. It only needs time and teamwork, and then you can get to whatever objective you had.”Isabel Cloutier, E-Commerce Manager, Innovair Solutions

That orientation, a calm confidence that most obstacles are solvable with the right team and enough patience, has become a defining feature of how she approaches digital projects. It is also, she notes, a perspective that tends to stand out in technical industries that have historically attracted more men than women. “I’ve always been the two-to-five percent female person,” she says, referring to her years in cadet programs and the military. “I’ve always liked to bring a different perspective to things.”

“There’s one other person I know, Sidney Gallaway from Impaqx, who also has a military background, and similarly there’s a calmness and a confidence that we can get things done. Maybe it’s a perspective on problems.” – Sarah Falcon, SVP of Global Marketing, B2B eCommerce Association

Learning on the Job, One Spec Sheet at a Time

Cloutier’s entry into HVAC was not the result of technical training. She arrived at Innovair roughly nine years ago as a product manager with no background in heating and cooling. She learned the industry by accompanying sales representatives on customer visits, traveling across the region, and, in her own words, reading installation manuals and specification sheets during her sons’ hockey practices. “I was the odd parent not really cheering during a practice,” she says. “I’m cheering during the games though.”

That same self-directed approach eventually carried her into e-commerce. When Innovair’s group underwent a transition after an acquisition, there was an opportunity to take on a role focused on digital commerce, a function the company’s sales and marketing team had not yet developed. Cloutier raised her hand and simultaneously enrolled part-time in a digital marketing course at a Montreal university (HEC Montreal).

“Whenever I’m at a point where I don’t feel that I’m learning anymore or being challenged anymore, I’m not a good maintainer. I kind of need to always be really challenged and mentally busy.”Isabel Cloutier, E-Commerce Manager, Innovair Solutions

B2B eCommerce in manufacturing and distribution is, by most measures, an environment well-suited to people who require constant intellectual engagement. The customer experience layer alone involves technical product knowledge, audience segmentation across installers, distributors, and end users, and the logistical complexity of serving markets in both English and French Canada as well as the United States. Cloutier describes it as “a great mixture of product knowledge, the specificity of it, what customers are looking for, and all of the marketing and sales fundamentals.”

Building a Vendor Network with Patience

One of the less-discussed aspects of standing up an e-commerce function inside a manufacturing or distribution company is assembling a partner ecosystem from scratch. Cloutier started within her existing network, talking to distribution customers who already had established technology relationships, then gradually expanded outward. Most of her current partners are Canadian, Quebec-based, and French-speaking, though she is actively working to diversify that group.

Her approach to vendor evaluation is deliberate. “I’m not someone who rushes things,” she says. “Before I’m on board, I feel that I need to take my time to compare, to read, and to learn about those different suppliers.” She acknowledges that this pace can be frustrating for vendors accustomed to faster sales cycles. Once she commits, however, she is fully engaged.

“Your approach of finding the small group of people and expanding outward makes a lot of sense. It kind of naturally filters for the right relationships.”Sarah Falcon, SVP of Global Marketing, B2B eCommerce Association

That deliberate pace also reflects a broader reality for e-commerce leaders inside multi-entity manufacturing groups. A solution that works for one brand, one market, or one customer segment may not transfer cleanly to another. As B2B distribution continues to evolve, companies that manage multiple brands and customer types are discovering that there is no single platform or tool that solves for all of it at once.

What’s Ahead: A Digital Platform for Technical Installers

Cloutier is currently working on an initiative she expects to be able to share publicly in fall 2026. The project involves a U.S.-based Innovair entity that currently relies on phone-based, consultative sales interactions to reach small, specialized technical installers. These are buyers who need significant guidance to identify the right product and complete an installation correctly. The goal is to extend that support function onto a digital platform, improving lead qualification and providing structured guidance throughout the buying and installation process, while giving installers the assistance they need at each step.

“They need to be taken by the hand to be able to use the right product and then to install it,” Cloutier explains. “We’re working on an initiative to help them through it, through a digital platform.” The project grew partly out of a connection she made at the B2B eCommerce World Americas conference in Scottsdale, which underscores something she emphasizes throughout the conversation: relationships, built over time and within the right communities, are what make complex projects possible.

AI: Opportunity Without Illusion

Like most e-commerce leaders working inside mid-market manufacturing and distribution companies, Cloutier is engaged with artificial intelligence tools while remaining clear-eyed about what they require. Innovair is using AI for content creation, including writing for multiple customer segments across distribution, installer, and end-user audiences. She describes the content volume gains as meaningful. At the same time, she is cautious about the promises made by vendors offering AI-powered solutions.

“There’s no magic solution down the road. You still need a human to monitor whatever AI you’re implementing.”Isabel Cloutier, E-Commerce Manager, Innovair Solutions

Innovair does not have a head of AI. Decisions about adoption are distributed across departments, with the expectation that teams share results with each other. “Some departments are working with consultants, some are doing their own initiative,” Cloutier says. The group is operating as both a manufacturer and a distributor, which means that AI applications look different depending on which part of the business is implementing them.

Her strategy for piloting AI is consistent with how she approaches most major decisions: test one market or brand first, evaluate the results, then expand if it works. “When you have a wide product and market portfolio, one solution might not fit the other market,” she says. It is an approach being adopted across the industry as practitioners try to make AI investments practical rather than speculative. The strategic use of AI in B2B marketing and sales is advancing quickly, but the organizations seeing real returns are those taking exactly this kind of measured, use-case-specific approach.

The pace of AI development adds its own pressure. “It’s a very fast-paced technology,” Cloutier says. “If you look back a year ago, it’s amazing.” During the conversation, Falcon offered a frame that Cloutier immediately recognized: “Someone said, ‘suddenly we’re all in school for AI, but we don’t know what the curriculum is and we don’t know when the class is over, and so we just have to keep learning.'” Cloutier’s response was simple: “Keep on going.”

Being a Woman in a Technical, Male-Majority Industry

Cloutier has spent the bulk of her professional life in spaces where women are the minority: the military, outdoor guiding, HVAC, construction, and now the technical side of B2B eCommerce. She does not frame this as a hardship, but she is precise about what it has required. Innovair’s ownership has been supportive of women in the workforce, and she currently leads a team that is predominantly female. Still, her advice for women entering B2B eCommerce is not primarily about navigating obstacles. It is about ownership.

“Be confident in what you can bring to the table and continue voicing what you want to voice. Sometimes we need to repeat our message even a little bit more. Don’t change yourself. Not ‘what would he do?’ or ‘what would she do?’ but what would you do?”Isabel Cloutier, E-Commerce Manager, Innovair Solutions

She illustrated the point with a memory from age 18, when she was selected for a 20-day international expedition through the Canadian Cadet program. She was one of two young women in a group of 15. No one, she recalls, believed she and her colleague would manage. She carried a 60-pound backpack on a 100-pound frame, rationing food every five days, and completed the expedition. “I do have a pink compass,” she adds, with a note of satisfaction.

That story is not simply motivational. It reflects a consistent pattern in her career: Cloutier has spent decades in environments where she was not expected to belong, and she has consistently shown up prepared. That preparation, whether through reading spec sheets at a hockey rink or taking a digital marketing course at 40, is what has made the career pivots possible. Manufacturers leading in B2B eCommerce share that same commitment to continuous investment in capability building, regardless of where the starting point was.

The Bigger Picture for Women in B2B

Isabel Cloutier’s trajectory is a useful reference point for understanding how the Women in B2B eCommerce community at the B2B eCommerce Association approaches the conversation around gender and digital leadership. The goal is not to catalog the barriers women face, though those barriers are real, but to amplify the specific ways that women are advancing B2B digital commerce: building teams, making methodical technology decisions, bridging technical and commercial knowledge, and creating the kinds of cross-functional partnerships that complex digital transformations require.

The community continues to grow, connecting practitioners across manufacturing and distribution who are building B2B eCommerce functions in industries where they are still in the minority, and where that minority status, as Cloutier’s career makes clear, often comes with a particular kind of resilience.

Join the Women in B2B eCommerce Community

Connect with practitioners, share insights, and follow the conversation on LinkedIn and through the B2BEA topic page dedicated to women leading digital transformation in manufacturing and distribution.Join the LinkedIn GroupExplore the Topic Page

Women in B2B eCommerceDigital TransformationManufacturingDistributionHVACAI in B2BCustomer ExperienceInnovair Solutions

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Sarah Falcon

Sarah Falcon is the SVP of Global Marketing for the B2B eCommerce Association. She writes about strategy, marketing, and the practitioners advancing digital commerce across manufacturing and distribution.