It was not by a bolt of lightning and one single invention but, as my father would always say, "find a need and fill it". We continue to celebrate EFCO's
75 years of wonderful growth, delivering valuable goods and services to the whole of society and living the American dream.
The EFCO success continues to generate from innovation, inventions, and hard work, and not from acquisitions of other companies and competitors but from a conglomerate of dedicated employees and shareholders. These employees and shareholders follow the example of our founder, W. A. Jennings, with continued success. Decade after decade, seven going on eight, EFCO as a company has fulfilled a dream of W. A. Jennings (W.A.) and built a training center for our customers and employees, EFCO's Concrete Construction and Forming Institute. A number of visitors, and there have been more than 400 companies represented, have come to the "EFCO training institute", opened only seven years ago, and asked, "How did EFCO end up in Des Moines, Iowa?" I usually answer, "Everyone must be from somewhere." Well, here is the rest of the story.
The company's founder, W. A. Jennings, lost his father in an accident when W.A. was only two years old. With his own hard work and the dedicated support of his mother, he became a graduate civil engineer from Iowa State University. In 1929, W.A. was working for the Oklahoma City Steel and Iron Works when the President of the company shot himself. This was a time in our country's history we have all read about; W.A. was out of a job, an adversity of the highest order. W.A. then returned to Des Moines, Iowa, where his mother was living and was hired to represent Meta Forms, a company from Milwaukee, to sell a steel form panel system in the sales territory of Iowa and Nebraska. It was not long after that, W.A. was telling Mr. Miller, President of Meta Forms, his ideas for a better forming system. Well, W.A. went his own way and started EFCO in 1934 with a new handset forming system and developed several new ideas and patented them. Interestingly, the Meta Forms company just this year is celebrating its 100-year anniversary.
Responsibility
It was October 4, 1979 when Pope John Paul II visited Iowa and made a special trip to central Iowa's historic "Living History Farms". The event and the crowd of more than one-quarter million were very impressive. Most important to me as a spectator was the Pope's message to Iowa's "farmers of the land". As I recall, at the event he said,
At the same time, like the farmers of Iowa blessed with more than 10% of the finest farmland in the world, the followers of W.A. Jennings, both employees and investors, have a responsibility to support EFCO's core values we have been blessed with of Quality, Innovation, Integrity, and Super Service (QIIS) and mirror his passion and work ethic for EFCO's business. Through his conservative business practices, our founder W.A. has given our employees and investors a passion for the business and a company recognized around the world for its excellent engineered products and services.
EFCO has never been bought or sold and only once bought another company. EFCO purchased a company, ABS Gell in Sweden in 1983, held it for only three years, recognized it did not fit EFCO's culture, and then let it go and returned to expansion from within with new even better products and new services.
The American Dream
Today EFCO is a privately held company proud to be owned by its employees, former employees, and their heirs, living the American dream. We are pleased we can say, "We have not been pushed around by the greed of Wall Street wizards." If you are part of a "form equipment buying team", these are especially important times for you as a buyer to recognize your supplier's financial stability and dedication to being the best in the business.
Our EFCO employees and investors are like the farmers of the heartland of America but, in our case, we are stewards for the "tools of production". In my opinion, EFCO's value to the world is tenfold its value to its employees and the shareholders.
A Cornucopia of Opportunity
Our EFCO opportunities as a company are endless. It is amazing to look back knowing that for the first 20 years, W.A. and EFCO for the most part only rented the all-steel form panels.
The system was used to build churches, schools, housing foundations, warehouses, factories, water treatment and sewage treatment plants, just to name a few examples. Today, we still have the best and most cost effective system for these structures but now our primary focus is on heavy engineered structures; as examples: highway structures, mass transit facilities, airports, sports arenas, stadiums, high-rise office and condominium buildings to 100 stories and more, water and sewage treatment plants, dams, flood retention structures, and on and on.
By Al Jennings, Chairman & CEO.
FORM MARKS Magazine »
From cover to cover you'll find concrete construction projects from all over the world using EFCO concrete formwork systems.
Contact »
EFCO is here for you. If you have any questions or comments please e-mail us at info@efcoforms.com
