This month, Ruth Lee Limited proudly celebrates 30 years of making and supplying training manikins to hundreds of thousands of professionals right across the world. We are often asked how it all started, and what made us get into the dummy business all those years ago.
It was indeed a fateful day when a firefighter friend of the Lee family walked into Ruth’s and husband Ron’s pram repair workshop, on Merseyside. Ruth, a trained seamstress, was asked by the fireman, who was employed by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, to repair the rather sorry looking home-made manikin he had brought in.
Ruth took one look at it and said with her indomitable spirit, “I can do better than that!” Over the weekend, she made a new manikin from scratch and this so impressed Merseyside FRS that they bought several pieces from her. The entrepreneur in Ruth then decided to approach Greater Manchester FRS and Cheshire FRS and all had the same reaction—they loved the manikins that Ruth had made! Ruth and Ron then toured the whole of the UK FRS network, and that soon led to the founding of our company!
The Lee family moved shortly afterwards to their beloved North Wales and the first production site was set up in a barn in the hills above Corwen. Since then, the company has grown and changed almost beyond recognition, but the first principles of always making the best quality products and satisfying the needs of our customers are still our top priorities today.
Ruth Lee training manikins are now used by professionals across a multitude of sectors to improve their skills in over 50 countries. In 2020, the company won the Queen’s Award for Export and in this, our 30th year, we were proud to win the King’s Award for Innovation for our Pool Rescue manikin, which is transforming the way lifeguards train to become ‘rescue ready’ when someone is struggling in the water.
Innovation now has a huge focus within the company, and we are more than excited to be launching a brand new product for the business, and indeed the industry, at the Emergency Services Show in September. Feedback so far from customers who have been involved in testing and development has been overwhelmingly positive, recognising the potential for this new technology to transform our sector in the years to come.
We’ve come a long way in 30 years! Our gratitude goes to Ruth for having the courage to start the business at the age of 57, and thanks, of course, to all our fantastic staff who have been so loyal and supportive over the years, and to our wonderful distributors and end-user customers across the globe.
We promise to you that when you train with a Ruth Lee manikin, you will always feel ‘rescue ready’ when it really matters! Here’s to another 30 years!
Paul McDonnell
Managing Director