What goes around, comes around.
Sometimes it takes a while to payback favours.
About 30 years ago I was a young retail buyer for McEwans, one of Australia’s largest hardware retailers. It seems strange now but the electrical accessory industry at that time was restricted in distribution via traditional electrician channels. I wanted to put a full range of switches, powerpoints, battens etc into a chain of retail stores. I was treated as a heretic in the industry. Only one company was willing to listen to my proposal. HPM was a family run company that specialised in plastic moldings that were built into light switches and power points. We worked together and eventually put together a full range for retail display and sale.
The recriminations were almost immediate. HPM was threatened with boycotts from electricians, competitive companies fuelled conspiracy theories and I was even threatened with bodily harm.
To HPM’scredit they stood firm, McEwans countered with some aggressive retail advertising and together we changed the distribution channel for electrical accessories.
Together our business boomed.
So what is the point of the story?
As you have probably read we have put a lot of thought into the electrical system in the project. We are using Dynalite for all of the automation switching. We will use Eubiq power tracks in many areas, so that trailing power cords are reduced. There is however a need for some standard power points. We do have to ensure that these are easy to use by people with disabilities.
This is where I turned to my friends at HPM again.
While Peter and his wife have sold the business to a French electrical conglomerate (Legrand) they still make some great product here in Australia.
The Como range of power points and switches are particularly suited to our use. They have large switches, or in the case of the powerpoint we chose are auto switched. This is the perfect solution to our powerpoint problem.
HPM have supplied 30 of these units for use in our project.
So after 30 years this entry on the blog is a small form of payback from me to HPM.
Check out their site as they are and have for 30 years been Australia’s premier electrical accessories manufacturer.