MP Chagger, MPP Fife and Councillor Freeman to Join E Craftsmen in Celebrating 60 Years of Business in Waterloo Region
Waterloo, ON - In a sea of start - ups, Waterloo Region doesn’t often revel in a 60-year anniversary. But, on November 8, 2016, House Leader and Minister of Small Business and Tourism Bardish Chagger, MPP Catherine Fife and Waterloo City Council Member Diane Freeman will join E Craftsmen Corporation in celebrating 60 years of business evolution and innovation.
The celebration, beginning at 9:00 a.m. at 73 Schaefer Street, Waterloo will include the presentation of a certificate from Prime Minister Trudeau, recognizing that E Craftsmen has been creating custom transformers and inductors in Waterloo since 1956.
“I have the financial records from that first year of business,” says Tom Bresele, who started as a junior design engineer at E Craftsmen 33 years ago before climbing the ranks to his current role as president. “It was ridiculous... something like $200 or $300 in sales.
”The company, formerly known as Electronic Craftsmen, was founded by Fred Sayers who incorporated the enterprise in 1956 after purchasing assets from the Electro Coil Company. Those early years housed 15 employees in the original Bridgeport and Weber location. In 1960, the growing company migrated to 73 Schaefer Street, which continues to serve as its home today.
“This area used to be the home to industries we worked with most: radio and television,” says Bresele, naming a tiny slice of the manufacturing culture that the Region – and E Craftsmen – once relied on so heavily.
Adapting to regional change isn’t E Craftsmen’s only forte. Given the global and constant need for power electronics and energy storage applications, E Craftsmen often finds itself at the hand of international issues or trend shifts.
“Change or die, I call it. We’ll always a dapt to what our customers need,” Bresele says, having directed the business through a number of the aforementioned industry shifts. “We’ll always have an emerging - technology customer in our pipeline.
"And they have. E Craftsmen has grown immensely from early business of making small parts for communications technologies. The team of about 50 now serves international clients in fields that range from aviation, aerospace and military to renewables or industrial automation.
“It’s a lot of diversity. We’ll churn out 300 or so designs every year and that’ll turn into 100 different new parts; we learn something new every single day,” says Blaine Gray, vice president at E Craftsmen.
Bresele doesn’t see an end to this learning in sight.
"People will always need transformers, maybe differently, but we’ll adapt to that, too. We’ve made it 60 years; we’ve got another 60 ahead of us.”
For more information or to attend the celebration please contact:
Blaine Gray,
Vice President, E Craftsmen
519 884 2210 x 237
