WADSWORTH, Ohio—Goldsmith & Eggleton has been a long-standing fixture in the rubber industry.
What started as a small family business has continued to grow and expand into new markets, and in 2018 will celebrate its 50th anniversary.
Rob Eggleton, business manager elastomers—reprocessed, Channel Prime Alliance and second-generation G&E owner, credits the small company's flexibility and entrepreneurial spirit for its success, saying the firm has been able to focus on market demand and seize available opportunities.
"G&E has always been in the raw materials business," he said.
"Throughout the years we've been merchant traders, distributors of plastic resins and rubber chemicals. We've distributed prime elastomers, resold offgrade and secondary polymers. At one point we entered the custom mixing business. We manufactured our own line of TPE's.
"The G&E business in Wadsworth has been focused on manufacturing reprocessed elastomers and manufacturing carbon black masterbatches for some time now."
Finding a niche
G&E has existed in many spaces during its 50-year run, but it started off with just an idea. While working together at Muehlstein, Allan Goldsmith and Bob Eggleton—Rob Eggleton's father—decided to branch out on their own in 1968 to service the need for distribution of raw rubber materials to a growing rubber industry.
"They saw a couple niches or commercial avenues that Muehlstein either didn't want to participate in or were reluctant to participate in," Rob Eggleton said, "so they started the company basically under that premise … what can we do as two individuals and what can we do better than a larger company."
Shortly after the company launched, Joe Fagan and Marvin Weintraub came on as equal partners. Richard Data served as operations manager. Originally, the company set up shop in downtown Akron and then began leasing a manufacturing complex in Wadsworth in the mid-1980s. The Wadsworth location became the company's first serious entry into the reprocessing business.