Looking back…

In 1923 Eddie Draffin (E.P. Draffin) started manufacturing ‘Everhot’ hot water services with his brother Arthur in their mother’s garage in Caulfield, Melbourne. They only had a pair of tinsnips and a soldering iron, and wound the electrical elements on grandma’s treadle sewing machine. It made headlines at the time when a whole street in Brighton had electric hot water services installed.
Their father, a school headmaster in Hamilton, died in 1910 when typhoid infected the water supply, leaving the young Draffin family in serious debt. They returned to Melbourne and a few years later Eddie was forced to leave the ‘Working Mans College’ (RMIT) to seek work just to survive.

Eddie went on to work for his cousin Ernie Machin, and was appointed Managing Director of Disco Manufacturing Corporation Melbourne, manufacturers of electrical components for car companies assembling their products in Australia. During World War II, as with most Australian manufacturers, Disco focused their manufacturing on war production making aircraft spark plugs and components for Bren gun carriers.

Factory, office and management teams		Back: John, Brian and Don Draffin with Orrick Seated: Ann and Barb Draffin

Early in 1945 Eddie found himself on one of the teams that established the Holden, Australia’s first wholly manufactured car that established the car industry in Australia. The Holden project was conceived to utilise the resources built up during the war, and with peace Disco began producing Holden spark plugs and other small electrical components.

A few weeks after WWII hostilities ceased, Eddie flew to London in a Lancastrian mail plane, a converted Lancaster bomber, at the time the quickest method. The trip by air took sixty hours whereas by sea would have taken about six weeks.

In 1953, Eddie rejoined his brother and was involved in the design and development of the Delmatic toilet system and Everhot slow combustion stove, only recently going out of production after many years service to Australia’s rural community.

EP Draffin Manufacturing commenced in 1957 when Eddie left his brother and with his son Brian started manufacturing ‘Windmatic’ automatic window winders for cars. Although only lasting briefly, the idea was well ahead of it’s time but commonplace today.

In 1964, Eddie purchased Gilway Products in Ringwood, a small company manufacturing beer taps and industrial faucets, and was then joined by son John, and Don in 1967. Eddie passed away in June 1974, and Brian rejoined the company in 1980. Gilway operated from a small rented tin shed with only a couple of employees.

In 1970, the company bought its first factory in Bayswater and moved to the current Edelmaier Street property in 1985 where an additional four surrounding units have since been acquired. Don is managing director, John is manufacturing director and prior to his retirement in 2006, Brian was administrative director. John and Don’s wives, Ann and Barbara, are also an integral part of the business, responsible for various administrative and financial functions.

Prior to moving to Bayswater, the company started manufacturing water pumps for the caravan and marine industries. These were significantly tooled up for, and in the caravan boom of 1974, following the Darwin cyclone, over sixty thousand hand pumps and five thousand electric pressure pumps were manufactured in one year!

The company also moved into repetition reproduction, purchasing seven plugboard automatic lathes, then state of the art. This required many complex special purpose machines and John Draffin skilfully designed and built most of these.

In 1988, Inwel Products was purchased taking the family into an exciting new world of street and parkland furniture manufacture. All other product lines were sold off leaving the company to concentrate on furniture with its broader market potential. Don has also developed a national marketing system able to reach economically throughout Australia free of any geographic impediments.

In recent years, John’s son Ian has joined the company managing the CAD design facility.
In 2007, the company employs about 40 people, including a management team of 12 headed up by GM Kevin Neligan.

What is unique in this company compared to others is that both Don and John are blind and consequently trust and rely on their employees more than most and in turn they respond magnificently.

With the third generation of Draffin’s coming into the business, the family now look forward with great enthusiasm to new ideas and challenges of the next 50 years.