FLEXcon celebrates 60 years

Neil McDonough, president and CEO of FLEXcon.

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FLEXcon was founded in Spencer 60 years ago by the McDonough family and has retained the same hometown and family ownership ever since. The company specializes in manufacturing films and adhesives for a variety of industries.

President and CEO Neil McDonough, son of company founder Myles McDonough, discussed some of the highlights of the past 60 years.

How does it feel to reach the 60 year mark?

On a day-to-day basis you’re always looking forward, but the reality is it’s been 60 years. That's a big deal, particularly in today's environment where companies go through so much change. We’re still headquartered in the same town of Spencer, where we originally started on Maple Street, in a garage.

We’re still owned by the same family ownership, and throughout those 60 years one of the things we’re really proud of is managing our finances to weather economic storms. Through oil crises and inflation, we’ve been able to offer steady employment the whole time to our loyal employee base.

How have you managed to stay afloat in the industry, which has changed a lot over the past 60 years?

There’s no question [Massachusetts] is a higher cost environment. Our take on it is we have to be more innovative and use automation better. Our equipment is so computer driven, in terms of knives moving and setting themselves as opposed to years ago, allen wrench and ruler and setting it to be the right side. Now it’s all automatically done by computer, rolls taken off machine by mechanical arms.

You minimize the cost where you can, but you try to work on higher value items and make sure you get paid for the innovation as opposed to being a commodity product. Spencer itself has had a lot of continuity and has been a very good partner with us.

Your employees average close to 20 years at the company. What do you chalk that up to?

It’s difficult for me to say because I’ve never worked for another company, but I have heard from people who have come to us for other companies. What they talk about is, being family held by a family with a sense of ethics counts. There’s a level of stability and price you can have from working here, and people see opportunities to grow in their position.

Some of it comes down to to managing finances -- being debt free. When tough times happen -- and tough economic cycles do happen, we haven’t as a nation been able to get rid of ups and downs -- not having debt and making sure we have a cushion allows us to run through them without having to sacrifice a good employee’s background for surviving in the short term.

There's certainly a sense of obligation, to provide those opportunities and not to cut people off just because we’re in the midst -- and we’re not right now -- but when a recession does happen, our first thought isn't to [cut jobs]. We think, "What else we can do? Where we can grow the business?"