Page 49 - HW FEB 2021

then as now
A “Then as now” special
Brian Frampton calls time on 33 years in building supplies.
IN A SLIGHT departure from our normal “Then as now” slot, where we review the industry as seen through the eyes of NZ Hardware Journal, this time we’re looking back through the eyes of one of the doyens of independent building supplies – and ahead as his former business takes on a new dimension.
Until he sold his business of the last 33 years late last year, Brian Frampton and Tawa ITM had been a fixture of the Independent Timber Merchants Society since the beginning.
To find out more about his experiences and his expectations for the future, we caught up with Brian in January, perhaps usefully enforcing a break for the active septuagenarian from being run ragged by his two grandsons...
EARLY DAYS IN TIMBER
“I’ve been working for 54 years,” he recounts. Having been through a building apprenticeship and worked in Australia, Brian joined Fletcher Timber in the 1970s, until around the mid-1980s when he joined Evans Bay Timber, which was eventually also bought by Fletcher’s.
Brian then worked for Parapine as sales manager for a year or so, after which he went into business for himself.
But Brian turned from spec building in the mid-1980s to building supplies as Tawa Building Supplies when the 1987 crash came along.
Having emerged the other side of the financial crisis “with the shirt on my back, but with the sleeves ripped off”, Brian decided that “the banks were never going to screw the life out of me again.
“So I ran my business for at least 25 years without an overdraught.
Tawa Building Supplies became Tawa ITM, the co-op’s 14th member.
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FEBRUARY 2021 | NZHJ 47