It started, as many good things do, with a hot afternoon and a cold beer.

 

It was 2010. Keith and I were sitting after work, and he told me about his day: he'd been in a roof, making electrical connections in something like 40 degrees. Anyone who has worked in a South African roof in summer knows what that means. He said what any tired, hot, frustrated Electrical guy might say: there had to be a better way to do this than with the products currently available.

 

We got talking, and somewhere in that conversation an idea took shape. What if there was something like a clamshell that closed over an electrical connection? No undoing wires, no starting again. It would just make a safe, compliant connection.

 

Brian, a friend I'd worked with for many years in advertising, joined us. So that was the team: two advertising guys and an Electrical Compliance expert. Between us, we had plenty of design and electrical experience, and absolutely no idea how to manufacture anything.

 

We sketched, then drew, then built prototype after prototype. Along the way, we had to learn how vacuum moulding works, and then find a company that would even deal with a start-up with an idea and no track record. One thing became clear early on: we needed to manufacture here in Cape Town, for a lot of good reasons, especially looking back 16 years. Sandplast, a local vacuum moulding company, was willing to work with us.

 

There was no funding. We put in our own money, and that made it very personal. Every prototype, every tooling decision, and every rand mattered.

 

Then came the day we saw our first units come out of the mould. We were proud, and we were also naive. Making the product turned out to be the easy part. We needed SABS certification. We needed distribution, packaging, and a marketing budget. Most of all, we needed to convince electricians, people who already had a way of doing things, that Ripbox was the new way to make a compliant electrical connection, and a fast one.

 

The moment we first believed it might really work was a phone call. Eugenio, from the distribution company South Atlantic, asked to meet for an espresso. Over that coffee came our first order: 2,000 units. We walked out knowing that someone else believed in Ripbox as much as we did.

 

Sixteen years later, Ripbox is still made in South Africa, and the same three founders still run it: Keith, Brian and I. It is NRCS compliant, built to stand up to dust, pests and heat, and available through our distributors nationwide. It began as one man's frustration in a hot roof and a conversation between friends.

 

We're grateful to Sandplast for making it real, to Eugenio and South Atlantic for taking the first big chance on us, and to every electrician and distributor who gave an unknown product a chance before it had earned it.

 

We started small, and we're still learning. Thank you for being part of the story.

 

Gian, Keith & Brian