DOWAGIAC — Audience members seated in their chairs at the Dowagiac Area History Museum got a live look at Lyons Industries at one of the museum’s fall lecture series.

Current Lyons Industries Chairman of the Board Don Lyons and his son, Lance Lyons, current president of Lyons Industries, presented to a packed house about the more than 50 years of history behind Lyons Industries, including a live look at all the steps in the production process through a live stream of the factory floor.

Don kicked off the first half of the presentation by telling the crowd about his father, Dale Lyons, and his involvement in various businesses — eventually morphing into Lyons Industries in 1968.

“To understand my dad and the decisions he made in the business world, you really have to know where he came from,” Don said. “The family was at the very bottom rung of the agriculture economic ladder. They were what my dad called, ‘tenant farmers.’”

Don talked about how growing up during the depression impacted Dale’s life. Anything Dale had, he either bought used or built himself.

“Quite frankly, that suited my dad,” Don said. “He was very handy. He was very artistic. He enjoyed building things. He enjoyed things coming together that he had dreamed up and made.”

Don went on to detail several of Dale’s involvement in various businesses, including a property service, developing a device used in mobile homes and building travel trailers with unfinished interiors.

Dale then was approached by two investors with a proposal to go into the mobile home business, which later became Allied Manufacturing. In 1968, the business was sold. At the same time, Dale had come up with a concept, called Columbia Homes Corporation.

This is where Don said he came onto the scene, as a senior in college at Michigan State University. He helped his dad with Columbia Homes Corporation. After a year, the business folded. For three years, Dale went on to run Cree Coaches and ended up selling his stocks.

“At 56 years old, [my father] doesn’t own a dime, doesn’t owe a dime. He is even with the board,” Don said.

In 1966, an acquaintance Dale had made at Whirlpool came to him with an idea for a product, an automatic plastic plumbing vent. The company had a two-year run, and in 1970, the mobile home industry adopted building standards, which they had not had prior to that. One of those codes said every vent stack had to go through the roof. The new code stopped Dale’s product in its tracks.

In 1970, Don needed a job and wrote up his own code for their plastic plumbing vent, turned it into the National Sanitation Foundation and had it researched by engineers at University of Notre Dame. The code was changed, and the plastic plumbing vents sold fast.

“We had sold over a million of them and got the cash flow we needed,” Don said.

Don bought out two other shareholders, and the Lyonses officially owned all of the company.

“I knew right from the beginning, no matter how successful I might be, I couldn’t have a viable business with a single product,” Don said.

He ran an ad in The Wall Street Journal looking for products made of plastic for mobile home RVs. One man responded and offered Don valuable information, especially on how to sell products.

“My dad says, ‘Son, sometimes I think you could sell refrigerators to Eskimos,’” Don said. “That’s a heck of an old phrase, but I think from him that was a compliment.”

In the 1970s, Don’s involvement continued to grow and new products were designed.

“Until I retired, I designed every product we ever made,” Don said. “I did a little back of the napkin scratching one time and came up with a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of products that I’ve designed, manufactured and sold. It’s been a wild ride.”

In 1977, Don bought Lyons Industries’ current property and in the late 1990s started experimenting with fiberglass to create bathtubs and shower bases.

“This was a completely different direction for the company,” Don said. “Even though we were still plastic and plumbing we had long ago branched out to residential and commercial construction. The way we were making these products was very different than we and anybody else had ever been making.”

Enter Lance, Don’s son. He went to college at Arizona State University and initially took his own path.

“We heard all about the business,” Lance said. “I was very respectful and grateful for it. The last thing I ever wanted to do was run it. I wanted to do my own thing.”

Lance had previously started a bicycle trick team in Dowagiac when he was 16, which elevated into him creating his own stunt team in Arizona. Eventually, Lance sold the trick team to a friend for $2,000, which is how much Lance owed to the state of Michigan.

In 1998, Lance found his way back to Dowagiac and started working at Lyons Industries.

After working in different parts of the plant, he took over as president in 2006.

During the end of the presentation, Lance showed how Lyons Industries currently makes its products in real time. Around the factory, there are 30 cameras that record everything from the front office to the shipping docks.

Lance said Lyons Industries is focused on investing in technology to create a safer working environment for its employees, which is what Lance has valued since his introduction to the company.

“I don’t know what happened, but I really liked it,” Lance said. “I took to the people. I really enjoyed working with the people and trying to make their lives easier.”