The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Feedall Automation strives for smart, steady growth
Jon Cocco spent 15 years running larger corporations for private equity funds, so when he looked to buy a company of his own,he had a good feeling about purchasing Feedall Automation of Willoughby.
“When I found Feedall, I knew it had the pillars to continue to grow and be successful,” Cocco said. “So I took the leap and acquired this business in October.”
About nine months later, Cocco is seeing that his instincts were right. As the new owner and CEO of Feedall, he recently saw the company celebrate the shipment of its 20,000th order.
Feedall also has implemented a new manufacturing system to increase productivity and hired three additional master craftsmen for its workforce since his arrival.
While those new developments are exciting, Cocco also is working to continue a tradition of quality and retain the high level of brand recognition that started back in 1946 when Lewis Winslow founded Feedall. The company continued under the leadership of its founding family for more than 70 years, until Cocco bought Feedall from Roger Winslow Jr. — Lewis’ grandson.
“So it’s got a lot of history, a lot of strong brand recognition in the marketplace and a lot of really loyal customers,” Cocco said.
Feedall engineers and manufactures parts-feeding and conveyor systems for a wide variety of industries.
“Companies that manufacture parts come to us and they say, ‘We need to feed this part into a secondary operation, can you guys feed it at a certain rate for us at a certain orientation?” Cocco said. “And so we take these parts, we analyze them and engineer a solution in order for us to provide a piece of equipment to do that.”
Feedall also designs and makes conveyor systems, which feed parts from one point to another and are often sold with feeder units.
“One of the things that I have great appreciation for is that we solve customers problems that they can’t solve in-house,” Cocco said. “They don’t have the capabilities in-house most of the time to be able to figure out the solution, as well manufacture a piece of equipment ... so they come to us and expect it from us.”
Feedall designs and manufactures its products from a 20,000-square-foot plant on Pelton Road that is staffed by about 20 employees. Cocco said about 60 percent of workforce consists of hourly skilled craftsmen: machines, welders, fabricators and electricians.
“We also have engineers that have a tremendous amount of experience and history with the company that have seen a variety of different part configurations and are able to identify what the right piece of equipment is and how to tool it so that we meet customers’ specifications. It’s a very highly engineered business,” he said.
As he settles in with the company, Cocco said he’s also impressed with how Feedall and its products are respected by customers.
“It’s almost like the Kleenex example,” Cocco said. “Customers refer generally to parts feeding systems as ‘Feedalls.’ We’ll go to a factory and someone says, ‘We have a Feedall here,’ and we look at it and it’s like, this is not our equipment. And so because of our 70-plus years in business, people have developed that brand idea where they refer to all equipment feeders as Feedalls.”
A history of high-quality, dependable products also has helped Feedall build a strong reputation.
“Our equipment is known in the marketplace as being bulletproof because it runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week 365 days a year,” Cocco said.
When it comes to customer service, Feedall also promises that it can provide replacement parts and maintenance for any machine the company has built dating back to its founding in 1946.
“I think there’s not a lot of pieces of equipment from 1946, but I will tell you we got a call on a piece of equipment from 1970 two months ago, so all we needed was the serial number off of the equipment and we can replicate and replace any part on the equipment and we’ll go out and service it as well,” Cocco said.
As for the future, Feedall is looking to grow and Cocco has a good idea of how to achieve that.
“Our company goals and our long-term perspective is to grow smart,” he said. “Steady growth is something we’re after, and we feel we can do that by entering market with new products and serving our existing customer base because they’re continually asking us to do things we don’t currently do.”