Danville homegrown company closes doors
Traci White
A “for sale” sign stands in front of Engineering Design and Sales Airside Industrial Park on Thursday.
One Danville manufacturer shipped its final product this week, ending 33 years in business.
Engineering Design & Sales manufactured battery chargers and power supplies for industrial and medical industries until electronic manufacturing moved almost entirely overseas, according to a company news release.
President Mark Gignac and founder Roy G. Gignac knew this was coming for a long time as they watched U.S. manufacturers outsource production, Mark Gignac said via e-mail.
Products costing $12 from the Danville facility would cost $2 from a manufacturer in China, he added. EDS didn’t lose orders to direct competitors, but had to close because sales dropped as clients moved the manufacture of their entire product to China.
Component suppliers were simply replaced, he added.
“Danville has been a great place to do business and as my father often said, if the business started in Chi-cago, no one would have noticed,” Mark Gignac said.
Roy and his wife, Joan, founded the company in 1976 in the basement of their Pittsylvania County home after a short career with Disston. The Gignacs left Chicago to work for Disston.
The company moved to a facility in Pittsylvania County as it expanded. In 1989, EDS moved into its present facility in Airside Industrial Park. The facility is now being prepared for sale or lease, the release stated.
During the past 32 years, EDS served more than 2,200 companies in every state and shipped more than 20 million products. Its manufactured parts have been used throughout the world, the release stated.
Roy plans to stay in Danville and his son, Mark, hopes to stay if he can “earn a living.” Mark started working for his father straight out of college and never dreamed he would be on the same job 30 years later.
“Clearly, there is a lot of sadness around the plant closing,” he said via e-mail.
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Reader Reactions
overzealous capitalists wanted globalization/free trade. this is the result.
Another Company bites the dust just as our Mills did.
Now all we need is for the Chinese Flag to be raised at the White House,“don’t laugh,watch it..you will see it soon enough..CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN…LOL..
Oh I don’t know that it’s a bad thing as it is just a feature of capitalism that companies will always look for the cheapest and most efficient way of doing things. And it benefits the Chinese and gives them more money so that they can buy stuff. Doesn’t help Danvillians I know, but that’s the economic system that a lot of us want apparently. I’ll buy American whenever possible, but only if it’s as good as the foreign made stuff. Just to buy American because it’s made here is anti-American, because it encourages us to be lazy and complacent.
I believe you RH. Such is the world we live in. There is probably much more that we don’t know about the origins of a lot of products.
If we bought only American made products we would not buy much anymore, even our food. I bought a bag of onions today that said “grown in USA” . I have A Buick, Dodge and Ford in my garage, none of the three were made in America !!
Wonder why Odummy did not bail them out? Ohh…...forgot they was not union shop. Well what the hey, I guess all of us can learn to love noodles on buns.
It is past the time for our gov’t to start worrying as much about our citizens as it does about foreign countries. We give tons of cash to foreign countries that hate us. We support foreign gov’ts that have our old jobs. We support companies that move overseas, or South, and close down factories in our country. We need to bring jobs back to our country. Start looking on the box. If it isn’t “made in the USA” then leave it on the shelf, or in the car lot. Who are we more worried about, our own citizens or foreigners? Then we need to start showing it. Actions are much louder than words.
Quote—Roy plans to stay in Danville and his son, Mark, hopes to stay if he can “earn a living.”—Unquote
Gosh I hope Mark can make it. I would hate to see him living in a box in front of the plant he used to run.
What I think makes this story so bad is the fact that our country is no longer a country of CREATORS, or MANUFACTURERS… we’re only a country of CONSUMERS.
This is mainly because our government has given so many other countries the ability to sell to us products that are not up to acceptable standards, and are produced in facilities that would not pass health and safety regulations in this country. Add to that the low pay that the workers get, and the fact that there are no taxes or tariffs being levied on these goods, along with the tax breaks being given to the companies based in our country BECAUSE they deal with other countries, and it’s no wonder there are no Americans working, or able to buy anything made in America.
Until the members of our government realize that the “globalization” of our economy is bringing about the downfall of OUR economy, we are, pretty much, doomed.
Where does one go to buy American-made products these days? There are none, or at least very few.
GM, which the American taxpayer “bailed-out” is now building a plant in China, take a guess as to why.
Until we purge our government of corporate-owned politicians, there will be no recovery, because there are no jobs.
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