07/06/2021
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PLATYPUS
The story of Platypus cricket balls begins with Eric David Mungo Brown, known by all as “Dave Brown”. In the 1930’s Dave, having just lost his job at a cricket ball factory, decided to start making his own cricket balls at his property in Northcote in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. The business moved around various locations in the area, before finally settling in at 442a Plenty Rd Preston in 1957. Dave’s son Eric Brown joined him in the business. Eric had an incredible natural talent for engineering and invention. With very little formal education, Eric designed, built and maintained most of the machines that were used in the production of Platypus cricket balls. Some of these machines were still in use up until the 2000’s. The winding machines that were designed and built in China were backwards-engineered from Eric’s original machines.
In the 1970’s, Eric’s two sons, Gary and Rodney joined the business. Gary, who had studied accounting, took over these duties in addition to working on the factory floor. Rodney worked the floor, learning all aspects of production, leading to becoming Production Manager of the company. In 1985 the factory moved across the street when a larger property became available. The 442a building had become far too small for the business. The new premises at 365 Plenty Rd gave the company the space needed.
Towards the end of the 90’s, the company was struggling to continue with the traditional hand stitching of the closing row. This hand work is difficult to do well, and skilled workers were becoming very hard to find. In addition to this, workers compensation insurance was in danger of being cancelled. Machine sewing was considered as an option, but this would have been prohibitively expensive and difficult to set up. Also, this would have been a break with tradition and would have removed our main point of difference from our competitors. Contact was made with shoe makers who had set up factories in China. The decision was made to have the closing seam hand-sewn in a small room in the back of a large factory in Dongguan China. In the early stages only this process was performed in China. Over the years it made sense to source materials and add more processes to the Chinese facility. In 2010 the final step was taken to move all production off shore, and the factory at 365 Plenty Rd closed its doors for the last time.
Gray-Nicolls Australia and Platypus Sporting Goods signed a partnership in the 2010’s. G.N. took over promotion and distribution of all Platypus products in Australia and New Zealand. Despite all the hard work and good intentions of everyone involved, the partnership was terminated by mutual consent, due to loss of market share and Platypus ceased all production in October 2018.
Platypus cricket balls have been used extensively in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa for decades. Other countries include: Hong Kong, Canada, Denmark, Holland, U.S.A, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji.
