It was more than just a Kodak moment for Badge Machine Products, a formerly family-owned manufacturer of precision parts whose clients include Eastman Kodak companies.
In 2004, Eastman Kodak awarded Badge, which is based in Canandaigua, New York, its Diverse Supplier of the Year Award for productivity, quality, delivery and overall customer satisfaction. Kodak, based in nearby Rochester, dominated the photographic film market before selling off some of its subsidiaries and filing for bankruptcy in 2012.
When things were going good for Kodak, they were great for Badge, a company founded in 1973 by Dick and Gail Flugel, and which the couple took over as their own when their partners moved out of state. Badge supplied component parts and upper-level assemblies to Kodak’s Clinical Diagnostics Division, and digital readers and X-ray cassettes to Kodak Health Group, a manufacturer of health-imaging equipment later renamed Carestream Health Inc.
“In the late 90s and early 2000s, we became an integral vendor in Kodak Health Group/Carestream’s digital program launches from digital readers to cassettes,” says Badge General Manager Kathy Herrick. “In the mid-2000s sales were booming.”
Herrick works at Badge with her brothers, Chris, a machinist, and Fran, a quality control manager.
“We all started working at the company when we were 14 or 15,” Herrick says. “We washed windows and swept the floors. I ran a machine. I didn’t think it was my calling, but I was willing to learn. We had a solid foundation.”
In 2004, Badge’s revenues reached $9.1 million and the company employed 40 people. The next year, Kodak Health Group/Carestream began outsourcing more of its manufacturing jobs to Malaysia, which resulted in a drop in Badge’s sales. As revenues declined, so did employment: By 2013, the number of employees had fallen from 40 to five, Herrick says.
Some members of the Herrick-Flugel family at that time considered leaving the manufacturing industry altogether, but instead decided to rebuild their relationships with Kodak, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics and Carestream. Ortho and Carestream manufactured products overseas for some time, but employed Badge to rebuild poorly-made parts and produce complex, high-precision pieces of equipment.
Badge’s ownership then decided to find an outside investor. Tom Herrick, Kathy’s husband and Badge’s finance manager and process engineer, persuaded manufacturer GW Lisk Co. Inc. to invest in the company. Lisk purchased a controlling share of the business, and the Herrick-Flugel family became minority owners that control 35 percent of the company. Lisk is now Badge’s largest customer.
In 2016, Badge’s sales were $2.1 million and the company employed 14 workers. Like other manufacturers, the company still has to worry about the possibility of customers turning to foreign manufacturers.
Ortho Clinical Diagnostics was sold in 2015 to Nypro Health Care, which manufactures blood-analyzing devices used by hospitals and universities in Rochester. Badge produces turned and milled parts and upper-level assemblies for those devices, but Nypro might be moving most of its manufacturing to Tijuana, Mexico.
Under President Donald Trump, it might be difficult for manufacturers to move operations out of the United States, Herrick says.
