Why the Railway?
Delighting Visitors
Lateral Thinking
The Way We Were
Responding to Globalization
Building an internet Attraction
Having Fun, on-the-job
Our team learned a long time ago that happy customers are fun to deal with. We consider it our mission to delight customers with the very best personal service and selection of everything we have to offer in ceiling fans, lighting and home accessories set in the context of theatrically staged showrooms.
The story about why and how the railway got built is no short story because it reaches back into the last century. Suffice to say it’s all due to one highly talented and creative man, Benny D’Aquila. Without him, the vision would have remained a dream. For over twelve years Benny inspired every one of our team members to help build, maintain and operate an elaborate, elevated, miniature railway. Benny was a lateral thinker. On so many occasions we witnessed his approach to problem solving, quickly finding alternate solutions to situations that befuddled the rest of us.
Why the name Willow World? Our parent company is Willow Mfg. Co. Ltd. And ‘world’, where does that come from? The antiqued one hundred and sixty foot long bridge is elevated nine feet above the showroom floor. On top of this steel bridge rests an entire illuminated miniature village. As more museum quality buildings are added, the bridge and buildings and their functions reflect the history of metal working from the late 1800’s through to the 21st century.
Willow Manufacturing was for a long time one of Toronto’s largest screw machine shops, employing as many as one hundred machinists at times. In fact we continue today machining component parts for some of Canada’s well known manufacturers, including Rockwell Automation – Allen-Bradley division.
Back in the 1970’s the building was filled mostly with machines and people, and the fan showroom, was just a room off to one side. Today, the building is occupied mostly by theatrically lit retail showrooms filled with hundreds of fans, lighting and home accents.
Unfortunately Willow’s fate would be impacted by globalization starting in the 1990’s, which forced the manufacture of component parts off shore to low cost shops. The good news is we survived because of highly experienced, loyal machinists, state-of-the-art technology and a dogged determination to employ new lean processes. Even though the foot print of our machine shop has been diminished, our automated machining processes have evolved in response to new market opportunities. Willow has morphed into a Boutique Machining Studio specializing in quick delivery of precision parts.
Another response to foreign competition was the development of a technologically advanced automated machining cell which generates streams of precision machined parts, washed, dried and packaged by a six axis robot. Then, just for the fun of it, we built a funicular to elevate finished parts up to an overhead railway. At the drop off point, specially designed rail cars deliver customer’s orders along fifteen hundred feet of ‘G’ scale track through circa 1900’s villages to the gravity packaging station.
My point! It pleases us to see visitors marvelling at something we built as a team, and to witness children gleefully following the trains from one showroom to the next, while at the same time our feature attraction really is an automated parts delivery system for World Class OEM’s.
Copyright 2011 - All rights reserved Willow Manufacturing Company Limited
