The Mr Pink Story 

Draco is a constellation in the far northern sky. Its name is Latin for dragon associated with large size, wisdom, breathing fire and long life

The Draco Corporation Story

Around 1986 Pink Pegs (Push On and Spring Pegs) were created by an Auckland Entrepreneur.
Not long after Kerry Harvey (Marketing and Distribution) and Brian McKeown and family (Manufacturing) took over the business.
For the next 14 years, Pink Pegs were manufactured in Greenhithe, a real family home business, even Granddad and Grandma helped out. For 12 of those years we only made Pink Pegs. Then Black and White pegs (with recycled plastic) were introduced for Basics Home Brands.
During this time we employed a large number of IHC people and others around the community who assembled and packaged our pegs. There were people all over Auckland sitting in front of television packing pegs, a nice bit of extra income for many who needed it.
One couple in Pakuranga put springs in our pegs for nearly 15 years. We developed a special machine that was like a giant stapler to put in the springs for these people, they did become pretty darn quick.
During this time we got lots of laughs and interesting proposals, New Zealanders are very creative people. If you drill down the centre of the push on pegs and thread a nylon line down the centre, tie a hook on and they are awesome for catching fish especially Kawhai.
The best Idea we have had is for socks. Many people’s washing machines seem to gobble up socks , and it’s always just one, so if like me you have 6 pairs of socks that don’t match someone came up with the idea to use Pink Pegs spring pegs to clip the socks together and put them in the washing machine. They come out of the washing machine together ready to hang on the line.
How quickly can your parrot get the spring out of one of our spring pegs? It’s actually very hard for humans but my brothers parrot got quite good at it.
In about 2003 we were advised by the IHC that they were no longer able to package our pegs. We were very disappointed as we had a very good relationship with a lot of the employees at several of the workshops at the IHC.
We were then forced to shift the manufacturing offshore but it also gave us the opportunity to use our experience and knowledge to improve and develop our pegs. With our input the New Triple Grip Pink Peg was designed by a leading Auckland design engineer. We were producing a very good peg.
The vastly improved Triple grip Peg, with special ultraviolet resistance was streets ahead of the other makes that were very prone to breaking due to sunlight UV degradation. We had one of our customers who left our pegs on the line for over 5 years and still going good.
Our pegs are the best and we came up with our logo “As perfect as a peg can be”.
Now back to today, 12 months ago we became a sponsor of Breast Cancer with every pack of pegs we sold we would give a donation to The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation.
This gave us a bit of fun in the beginning because at start up we had 200,000 packs of pegs that needed to be unpacked and Breast Cancer Stickers placed on every packet and then repackaged into the cartons. We found that came out of the box did not really want to go back into the same box.
So how do we do this daunting job? Taa daa…. we were rescued by the Breast Cancer dragon boaties (Busting with Life), on the North Shore. They did an incredible job over about a 6 month period. We thank them again and again and again.
In 2011 after many years of looking for new products that fitted our criteria, Mr McKeown suggested we look at Pantry Moth traps with natural pheromones (a sex attractant for pantry moths). With much scepticism they were trialled and ….Wow they are like a miracle how they worked.
This began our new adventure into pheromone Pantry Moth traps which have now become a market leader, selling in most, or many, supermarkets, throughout New Zealand.
The next big step for our company was the retirement of Mr Kerry Harvey as a Director in 2013. This was after 24 years of the most amazing and enjoyable business relationship. The company is now run and operated by the McKeown Family Trust – a husband and wife and family team.
The creative juices began to flow, a new image, new branding and from what many of our friends called us Mr Pink was born.
We are now looking at new products, we only sell things we are passionate and proud of.
At the end of the day this very New Zealand company is actually still contributing and making a difference in the culture and society of our country …..and making the best pegs and pheromone insect traps there are.