TuBro Company’s 40th Anniversary
TuBro Company in the 1970’s
The TuBro Co., Inc. began as a part-time family business in Harrison Gift’s garage. Harrison’s experience working in sales at Rohm and Haas for 35 years, along with William Gift’s plastic engineering know-how, provided the foundation for the TuBro Co. Kevin Gift was trained as a fabricator while attending Temple University full-time.
Early products included radio dials for Dynaco, a popular manufacturer of Hi-Fi audio systems in the 1960’s and 1970’s. TuBro also began producing clear acrylic meter covers for Porter Instrument.
In 1974, with the garage bursting at the seams with dials and covers, it was necessary to move to a larger facility in Willow Grove, PA. At this point, TuBro became a full time endeavor. A handful of full time employees, including Kevin Gift who is currently President and Owner, provided the manpower to meet the growing needs of the company.
In 1976, TuBro needed even more space to grow operations. The company rented a portion of a building in Ivyland, PA. We now occupy the entire building. The big product that year and for several years thereafter was calendar holders. The calendar holder was a marketing tool that provided a monthly calendar with advertising on each page enclosed in a self standing acrylic holder.
The late 70’s continued with more sophisticated acrylic work, such as museum quality vitrines, acrylic glove boxes, controlled atmosphere chambers and incubators. It also began the entry into plastic welding. After extensive training at the Dynamit Nobel facility in Germany, our welders became proficient in the welding techniques needed to weld PVC and Polypropylene. We ended the decade welding PVC tanks and Polypropylene fume hoods for various industries.