Craig Chapman joins Ivory Egg Australia

Ivory Egg is pleased to formally announce that Craig Chapman commenced in the position of General Manager for our Australian operations during November 2021. Craig brings many years of building automation and commercial experience to this role, from his time working with ABB and Hager and through his collaborative efforts to help promote the introduction and uptake of the KNX open standard within Australia. Meanwhile, Clayton Brown has progressively been stepping back from his day-to-day business management and operations focus to support the business with an orderly handover and transition.

"The timing is perfect for Craig to join us as a well-known industry leader in the Intelligent Building space. Craig's experience, both from the manufacturer and customer sides, blends perfectly with the direction of Ivory Egg as the leading supplier of professional products and services in the sector. I would like to personally welcome Craig to the Ivory Egg family. "
- Colin Price, Director, Ivory Egg

An introduction from Craig

I am really excited to take on the role of General Manager with Ivory Egg Australia, at this stage of the company’s journey. It is really impressive to come into the business and witness what Clayton (Brown) and the whole Ivory Egg Australia team have accomplished in a relatively short space of time. The Australian company was founded six short years ago and has experienced significant year-on-year growth ever since. This is a testament to Clayton’s commitment and leadership during the start-up phase, with plenty of support from this team of passionate and motivated employees, like Simon (Harvey), who is the foundation employee. 

I’ve known Clayton and Simon for quite a while, dating back to my time with Hager B&R and the very early stages of KNX in Australia. In those early days it was certainly challenging to promote acceptance of KNX and its open standard approach, against some deeply entrenched, proprietary control systems. I actually like to think that I was instrumental in introducing Clayton and Simon into the world of KNX, during their contractor era, when they were running their own (separate) integration businesses. That was well before Ivory Egg Australia was formed. 

We made some “pioneering” treks to Europe together for training and to attend the Light + Build international trade fair in Frankfurt, Germany. The Light + Build experience was like stepping into a totally different world from anything that I had ever experienced in Australia. To see so many different manufacturers displaying their products, all interoperable with the other manufacturers that were displaying in the same gigantic KNX hall. I’m certain that is where the initial seed for Ivory Egg Australia was sewn.   

Today, Ivory Egg Australia represents quite a number of those same manufacturers, as we strive to simplify the concept of KNX for all of our partner integrators around Australia, whilst offering all of the benefits of open standard, multi-manufacturer building automation solutions. The business model works really well and it also helps to share back office resources through Ivory Egg Group, with additional support from our Ivory Egg sister companies, based in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. 

For any readers that aren’t aware, KNX is the ISO/IEC 14543 international standard and in 2018 it was adopted by Standards Australia as the Australian Technical Specification SA/SNZ ISO/IEC TS 14543.3.1-6:2018. But it isn’t right of me to pigeon hole Ivory Egg Australia as a distributor of KNX solutions. Today we offer gateways and product solutions to support DALI, BACNet, Modbus, Mbus, Zigbee, Enocean, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth integration, plus many, many more protocols. We prefer to label ourselves as a distributor of intelligent building technologies and we have some pretty big aspirations to deliver on this, well into the future.

In closing, I cannot thank Clayton enough for handing over the Ivory Egg Australia leadership baton to me and for entrusting me to guide the business into the next phase of growth and maturity. I wish Clayton the very best in all of his future endeavours outside of Ivory Egg Australia and count my blessings that he will remain with us as both a shareholder and non-executive director.

Craig Chapman MBA, MBC (Mktg)
General Manager
Ivory Egg Australia