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West Coast Chain Manufacturing Co. founder W.R. Lummis invented the original KEY-BAK® self retracting key reel in 1948. Mr. Lummis was a switchman on the Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles. There he saw the need for a safer way for railroad switchmen to carry their switch keys.
Often brakemen and switchmen were injured when their dangling key chains got caught on moving trains. The answer to Lummis was a reel that would keep the keys at the wearer’s side, handy to their use, but safe from snagging on moving rail cars. Based on this idea he developed the first crude, but workable retractable key reel which he and his wife, Dorothy, began to manufacture the first KEY-BAKs in the kitchen of their home.
W.R. Lummis sold the first KEY-BAK retractable key reels to his brother railroaders and in his spare time, began selling to interested locksmiths in the Los Angeles. Word of mouth eventually spread and sales continued to grow. Lummis eventually left his job at the railroad and devoted all of his time to manufacturing the KEY-BAK key reel which moved from the kitchen to the garage behind the house where the first KEY-BAK key reel “production line” was established.
The company quickly grew out of Mr. Lummis' garage but stayed within Pasadena at the center of the aerospace industry. With Caltech and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories nearby, it led to an early adoption of technology and rapid improvements to the original self retracting key reel design. The original KEY-BAK® became a high quality product engineered with the best materials available anywhere in the world.
In 1985, West Coast Chain Manufacturing Co. (WCC) had outgrown its facilities in Pasadena and moved 40 miles east to Ontario, California. The production of the key reel is done at the company’s Ontario, California plant. A continuous testing program is carried out on all finished products. Each KEY-BAK® key chain reel is checked for proper operation and quality assurance before packaging.
The product and industry Mr. Lummis started in his garage in Pasadena, California is now internationally recognized and one of which we think he'd be proud. We at West Coast Chain Manufacturing Co. (WCC) are proud of our history and work to keep the tenets learned over the past 6 decades close; ingenuity, entrepreneurial spirit, adoption of technology, high quality and efficient trade of goods and manufacturing. |
