Gunsmith W. Thomas and Sons sets sights on quality local air rifles
ON TARGET IN KADAWATHA: Royston Thomas is wearing shorts and a wrinkled tee-shirt. His blue apron is sprinkled with sawdust as he sits behind a machine his fingers working deftly on a spring mechanism, a key component of an air rifle.
Testing a gun.
Although he is the chairman of the only gun manufacturer and gun car centre in the country, Royston does not shy away from getting his hands dirty. Elbow grease comes natural to him, especially when it involves manufacturing or repairing air guns or air rifles which have been a family business since 1957.
Today, W. Thomas and Sons – the W is for Wilfred, Royston’s dad who started the business in Kotahena in the 50s – is on the verge of moving on from being a cottage industry to one where they will be manufacturing 50 air rifles per day.
Happy days for the Thomases? Not really, for Royston, 60, is facing a huge problem –unscrupulous competitors who are importing cheap guns into the country and thus threatening a home-industry.
This is a familiar cry among most local manufacturers and entrepreneurs, from farmers ploughing paddy fields to other more sophisticated industries. In today’s open market economy, they cry the government does not do enough to safeguard and nurture a homegrown industry.
“I have 22 people working for me and I hope to double this number soon. I’m giving employment to people and trying to help the local economy in my small way, but this is against all the odds,” points out Royston as he shows us around his factory cum home at Kadawatha.
His grouse is that despite getting a license from the Ministry of Defence to manufacture air rifles – his company being the only one to get this facility – he is up against dodgy competition, people who have managed to somehow wrangle a license to import guns from overseas which are of a poor quality.
“There are people who bring in scrap guns and sell them at a cheaper price. The quality of these guns is poor. Soon after we were awarded our license to manufacture guns, I found out that at least five other parties got permits and licenses to import guns,” Royston related.
Cut-throat competition
The cut-throat competition is a huge obstacle to W. Thomas and Sons, a company which has made guns for everyone from Prime Ministers of this country to its farmers.
Royston Thomas with a range of guns
“These importers bring in inferior quality guns and rifles. While we give a five-year warranty on every air rifle we sell, they only give a one-year warranty. The government should safeguard the local industry and not damage it by opening this business up to people who are unscrupulous and just out to make a fast buck. How can we build Sri Lanka if nothing is done to protect us?” Royston asks.
You might think the air guns and air rifles are a small market. In a way it is for most of Royston’s customers are farmers, and shooting enthusiasts including students who take up the sport of rifle shooting. But apart from the guns itself, the bigger business is in selling bullets which Thomas and Sons also imports.
When he was 19 and having just finished his schooling at St. John’s College, Dematagoda, Royston left for greener pastures in Dubai. He went armed with the knowledge of how to strip an air gun or air rifle and put it back again, how to repair these weapons used for hunting wild boars and birds in the dense jungles of Sri Lanka in the 70s.
His dad Wilfred was a gunsmith to Prime Ministers and the local aristocracy. Among his clients were J.R. Jayewardene and his son Ravi Jayewardene, the Bandaranaike family and Stanley Tillekeratne.
Personal gunsmith to the rich and famous
“My father was the personal gunsmith for very famous people. He was the only specialist who knew how to repair everything from pistols to air rifles,” Royston remembers.
Wilfred had three sons – Royston, Shirley and Kingsley – and he taught them all the trade. One day, Sam Kadirgamar, the famous Queen’s Counsel and lawyer, and eldest brother to Lakshman, turned up at the home of the Thomases, bringing an air rifle for repair. Sam was a member of the Ceylon Rifle Association.
“I remember Sam telling us, “I hope all three of you will all be like your father”. He was paying a compliment to my father who could repair any gun,” recounts Royston.
Royston did have his dad’s touch, but it was purely chance which ensured he continued in the same footsteps for while he was working in Dubai in a garage he happened to run into a neighbour who was Brigadier General in the United Arab Emirates Army.
“He had a gun which needed work done on and I told him I could repair it,” reminisced Royston. Impressed with the young man’s work, the brigadier asked Royston if he would want to work for the Dubai Police repairing guns.
At work
That was the start of his career overseas learning about guns. He had learned the fundamentals at the feet of his father, but now he gained invaluable foreign experience too. From Dubai, he went to the US, then Spain and finally found himself in Austria, 17 years later, having become a fully qualified gunsmith.
Fate then played another hand, resulting in Royston returning home to Hendala, Wattala, to join his wife and young son.
“I was in Austria on that fateful Boxing Day in 2004, when I saw the tsunami tragedy play out on TV. I immediately caught the next flight home to Colombo, deciding it was time to return for good to Sri Lanka,” Royston remembered.
Royston had been working for Fuchs Guns in Austria, makers of the highest quality hunting rifles, and he brought back with him all the lessons of the gunsmith trade that he had learned overseas and decided to continue a business his dad had started.
For the last decade or more, his company has been providing invaluable service to the Armed Forces, especially the Police’s Special Task Force and the Navy, being heavily involved during the war years.
“My brother Shirley was one of the first sergeant-majors when the STF was set up by Ravi Jayewardene. He was the gunsmith for them.”
Firm foundation
Royston had a firm foundation to work on with W. Thomas and Company having already acquired a good reputation.
“They are a famous and very old company. Anyone who has a passion for air rifles and air guns know about them,” interjects Siri Abeygooneratne, a customer who has come all the way to Kadawatha to buy a new air rifle.
“The only thing about them is that they need to have an outlet in Colombo. It will help them to sell more air rifles,” adds Siri, who yet went to the trouble of making the trek to the boondocks. That says a lot for the quality of the craftsmanship of W. Thomas and Sons.
Royston admits he needs to upgrade the sales side of his business. “I know everything about the engineering side but I need to streamline other aspects of the business.”
Two years ago, the Defence Ministry gave the company a licence to manufacture air guns and rifles in Sri Lanka as well as repair guns. This was after he and his entire family had been screened thoroughly by the CID. Since then Royston has been streamlining the manufacturing process getting down state-of-the-art machinery from the US including one lathe which cost a whopping US$355,000.
From making painstaking handmade guns, his business has now become fully automated. But the personal touch is still there. For instance, the stock of the gun is still being cut from mahogany and lovingly crafted and polished.
He is now ready to take the next leap forward and raise production to 50 guns per day. And he prays the playing field will be made level by the government – that licences to import foreign guns will not be given freely around.
“I’m providing work to people. I hope to take on more people soon. We pay EPF and ETF. We give loans to our employees. My total overheads monthly are more than Rs.600,000. Despite all this, I’m willing to go ahead because I firmly believe in products made in Sri Lanka. “Let us build Sri Lanka. The government should support small businesses like ours and clamp down on imports,” Royston adds.