Richard “Dick” Edginton, 91, may be a long time removed from the day he retired from All-Fill, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that he founded in 1969 in Newtown Square, but he’s never far — both physically and spiritually — from its daily operations.
In fact, Edginton, who retired in 1997, visits All-Fill’s headquarters, now located in Exton, every Wednesday. Often armed with donuts or bagels for the employees, all of whom are considered family, Edginton still brainstorms with his grandsons, the third generation of Edgintons to run the company, on ideas about moving All-Fill forward in a rapidly evolving industry.
The Edgintons — brothers Ryan, Kyle, and Eric, as well as cousin Chris Trabbold — remain determined, just as much as Richard was in the company’s earliest days, to push limits while listening to the needs of the customer.
“All-Fill has always been in our blood,” said President and CEO Ryan Edginton. “As kids, we were always hanging around the business, sweeping floors, riding carts, or pushing hand trucks. We didn’t know anything about the company, but we knew how dedicated our grandfather was, how much street smarts he had.”
Richard launched All-Fill in 1969, when his employer, Diehl Mateer Company (DMC), was sold to The Berwind Company, and he was uncertain about the future of the business. Originally, All-Fill had 4,000 square feet to work out of along West Chester Pike in Newtown Square. Contrary to his position at his former company, Edginton recognized that he had to use his sales abilities in order to get All-Fill off the ground.
All-Fill started with six full-time employees, whom Edginton had recruited from his DMC days by promising higher wages and a better opportunity. All that was missing were the sales.
“They saw something in my grandfather and trusted him to make the right decisions in building the company,” said Ryan. “My grandfather would always get everyone around him what they needed to be successful before himself. It was always them before him.”
At the dawn of the 1970s, All-Fill had established a small market share of the dry powder filling industry. By then, however, several of its customers had a need for a multiple spindle auger filling machine, and that demand allowed All-Fill to venture from the entry level of semi-automatic packaging machinery into the lofty realm of automatic packaging machinery.
“My grandfather had resolve,” said Ryan. “I was told stories about my grandfather taking a very basic auger filler, throwing it in the back of a station wagon, and driving up and down the East Coast trying to sell it. That’s how business was conducted back then: You took the machine to the customer, demoed it, and hopefully walked away with a check.”
Firmly on the rise after being in business in just five years, All-Fill was able to start taking on riskier applications. Richard bought, partly out of curiosity and partly out of personal hobby, an airplane for the company to have quicker accessibility to customers. The purchase was symbolic, as All-Fill was there to stay.
All-Fill continued pushing forward as the 1980s neared, and so the lack of space in Newtown Square was quickly becoming a problem. The company soon moved to another facility in Malvern that was more than 33,000 square feet and offered the opportunity for expansion.
Fast-forward to today. All-Fill’s home now spans 65,000 square feet on Creamery Way in Exton, and a large portion of its current workforce was hired long ago by Richard. (Just two years ago, Nick Belvick, one of the company’s original employees, retired from his position as the head of the quality control/inspection department.) The rest of the staff enjoys Richard’s weekly presence.
“It’s still his baby; he still wants to know what’s going on,” said Ryan. “We’re a family company, and seeing my grandfather lets our workers see the relationship between the first and third generation. They see that we keep his values at the forefront, and they enjoy showing him what they’re working on. Plus, I have more fun with that guy at 91 than with most anyone else.”
