News

Slow and Steady

As EPI Electrical Enclosures & Engi- neering welcomes its 55th year in business, CEO Rudi Rodriguez reflects upon the history of the business.

In 1967, a small company was estab- lished by an electrical contractor who wanted to supplement his electrical work by building electrical junction boxes. They began producing everything from barbecue pits to steel building compo- nents and electrical junction boxes.

In 1969, Ted Rodriguez joined the company in the role of management con- sultant. He was given one-third of the stock. By 1974, Ted’s stock ownership in- creased to 50 percent and the company began to change focus. It began brand- ing itself within the electrical industry, giving rise to EPI-Electrical Enclosures.

That was a great year for EPI. Current owner Rudi Rodriguez joined his father Ted that very year as vice president of productdevelopmentandsales.Thecom- pany launched their first NEMA 1 & 3R en- closures and wireway groups. They were on their way to establishing themselves as a full-line electrical manufacturer.

A year later, the father/son duo bought out the remaining shareholder of the company to own 100 percent of the company’s stock.

The company began expanding into the Austin, Houston and Corpus Christi markets by the late ‘70s. With substantial growth, the company purchased 15 acres in 1981 to build a new plant and offices, making way for further growth.

By 1985, they had succeeded in de- veloping all of the five different NEMA Product Groups. The addition of the NEMA 4, 4x and 12 Industrial product group laid the ground work for continued growth and development.

The ‘90s brought industrial product accomplishment to the company. During this era, EPI’s engineering group made it possible to provide significant contribu- tions to state of the art NEMA Industrial Product Applications with projects as the “World’s Largest Robot” for the USAF, “Seawolf II” for the USN and “Spacecraft Endeavor” for NASA.

EPI introduced their third product group in the mid-‘90s, NEMA 3R Bussed Secondary products, Pad-mounted Buss Secondary, Wall-mounted Buss, Tap Boxes & Buss Wireway – all designed by EPI’s engineering department.

In 2014, EPI rebranded, adding engineering to their corporate brand – EPI Electrical Enclosures & Engineering as they are known today. “Our engineering team is widely sought after by many engineers to provide design and specifications,” says Rodriguez.

Perhaps, one of the most important part of our history, is the fact that most of our distributors have been buying from us for as long as we have been in business such as Consolidated Electric Distributors, Crawford Electric , Dealers Electric , Elliott Electric , Graybar Electric Supply, Hill Country Electric Supply, Rexel, Reynolds Company, Winsupply and Westing- houseElectric.

”The other important part of our suc- cess has been the men and women from our administration and plant employees who have contributed greatly to our suc- cess. Our firm is very grateful to them for theircontinuedworkandcontributionto our industry, community and our country!

“To date, we have manufactured mil- lions of products with hundreds of thou- sands of destinations state-wide and na- tionally. We also thank all our customers and vendors for providing us with our past, current, and future business.”

Article from April edition of Construction News in Austin and San Antonio