Stepping up to direct the company their father started nearly 40 years ago are, from left, Mike, Tom, Terri and Dan Gleason.
Nothing goes out the door without the ELFCO logo on it — many of the basic nuts and bolts items go in a custom ELFCO box.
When ladders come in they feature the ELFCO name and logo imprinted at the factory. When they go out, they include the customer’s name stenciled in place as a finishing touch.
Custom cutting Unistrut channel and threaded rod is a significant service that ELFCO customers have come to rely upon. A section of the new warehouse has been set aside to make it easier and more efficient to accommodate the increased demand for this value-added activity.
The new warehouse with its spacious aisles and wide racks makes filling orders fast and efficiently, much easier than in the multiple building layout of just a few years ago.
The balcony area above the offices at ELFCO holds the slower moving items and those, like power tools, that require extra security.
A recent Milwaukee tool promotion turned the showroom into a "madhouse" according to the Gleasons. They sold more than 500 hammer drills in one day as buyers responded to the unadvertised special event.
With eight overhead doors in the shipping/receiving area of the new warehouse, moving inventory from the smallest fastener to a heavy load of steel has become easy and efficient.
Don Rigg helped to get the Electrical Fastener Company off the ground. The semi-retired comptroller still has his pulse on the financial side.
"Like many companies, we started with too little money. We went to an ultra-conservative local bank for a line of credit and the banker told us to 'eat lots of spaghetti to save money.' And he wasn't kidding," Rigg grins.
The first building housing the Electrical Fasteners Company qualified as a humble beginning - "the humblest," Rigg says. "When it rained the basement always flooded.
"The company's first 'catalog' was four pages - basically a typed price list - now we have thousands of SKU and a product list in binders 5 or 6 inches thick," Rigg marvels.
The company, basically two men and their kids repacking the nuts and bolts delivered to them in kegs and reselling them, started sharing 3,000 square feet of space. Today, Jack Gleason's three sons and a daughter have taken over the reins and they continue to rely on a sound, old school, business plan built on managing resources and serving people.
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