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Even in an era of globalization, Dayton continues to make things. Here are six businesses that have shaped Dayton’s past, present and future.
The base
Wright-Patterson, of course, is a U.S. Air Force base and home of the Air Force’s logistics, supply and research efforts. It also is, with some 27,000 civilian and military employees, site of Ohio’s largest employer in one locale.
Depending on whom you ask, WPAFB is the most important Air Force base in the world. And the Greene County base is inarguably the most important employer in the Dayton area.
Many airplanes and weapons systems are designed, developed, acquired and perfected at Wright Patt, or that formative process is overseen from Wright-Patt.
Which makes sense. The base traces its history back to the original aviation researchers, Dayton brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, who perfected piloted flight in 1904-05 over the nearby 84-acre Huffman Prairie.
By 1948, what had been Wright Field and Patterson Field were brought together into one sprawling base. (Another part of the base was given to the state of Ohio in the early 1960s to become what today is Wright State University. In Dayton, we have a right to our “Wrights.”)
The “Cash”
Though NCR — once known as National Cash Register — is no longer based in Dayton, its history will always be intertwined with the city.
John Patterson, legendary founder of NCR, oversaw a local rescue response during the Great Flood of 1913, which devastated several communities along the Great Miami River, including Dayton.
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The company had 11,000 local employees by the end of 1949 and 18,000 in 1966.
But a long exodus from Dayton to other sites globally probably began in the 1970s, if not earlier, and by 2009, NCR had just 1,300 employees in Dayton, fewer than it had in Georgia at that point.
By June 2009, the company announced a headquarters move to the Atlanta area, something residents and leaders long feared and suspected. Some of NCR’s executive team remains based in New York City, where current CEO Bill Nuti has long worked.
Standard Register
Founded in 1912, Standard Register is another Dayton company that has weathered the test of time. It’s still based in the Gem City while growing elsewhere, most recently in Denver and, last year, in Jeffersonville, Ind.
Once focused on paper, documents and labels, Standard Register today is more about helping companies communicate with customers and staking a place in health care, financial services, industrial and other markets.
In August 2013, Standard Register acquired another local company operating in roughly the same space, Workflow One, in a deal valued at $218 million. What came of the deal was “one of the largest printing and print management companies in North America,” the company said at the time.
Today, the newly combined company has about 825 Dayton employees and 3,600 workers nationally.
Delco/Delphi
Even in Dayton, Delco – a former producer of auto and defense electronics – and Delphi – a current producer of auto parts – sometimes get confused.
Delphi was born of General Motors’ auto parts-producing arm, being spun off and becoming an independent company in 1999.
At one point, part of Delco itself was spun off to Delphi. That may be one source of confusion. Another source: Both companies had strong ties to Dayton, at different places and at different times in their long respective histories.
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The Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co. (which became Delco) was founded in 1909 by two Dayton-based giants of business and engineering, Charles Kettering and Edward Deeds.
Chances are excellent that you’ve never had to use a hand crank to start a car. For that, you have Mr. Kettering – inventor of the automotive self-starter — to thank.
In Dayton, unfortunately, Delphi’s story quickly became one of steep decline after 1999.
In 1999, some 15,000 workers were employed at area Delphi plants. Two years later, that number was cut roughly in half, being halved yet again by the summer of 2005, the year Delphi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
A string of Delphi plants closed in the area as the company made its way through Chapter 11. Delphi, which left bankruptcy in 2009, continues to employ maybe as many as 200 people at a Vandalia plant and continues to supply GM with components, mostly from off-shore sites.
Delco no longer operates as a separate entity, although GM controls the name and well known ACDelco spark plugs and other auto parts are found in garages everywhere.
Esther Price
The name of a Hamilton native goes out on nearly a million boxes of chocolate and candy each year.
Esther Price has been synonymous with boxed chocolates for nearly nine decades. But the company’s story started in Hamilton and continues today in Dayton, where the company is still based in offices off Wayne Avenue.
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Born Esther Rohman in 1904, the future entrepreneur enjoyed working behind the candy counter of her grandparents’ grocery store in Cincinnati. Her family moved to Dayton when her father, John, got a job at NCR.
She made chocolate as a home business for 30 years before opening a Dayton shop in 1952.
Price sold the company in 1976 to a group of Cincinnati businessmen. But in 2006, the company became family-owned again, with Jim Day taking ownership.
In 2011, the company’s quality manager told a Hamilton audience that Esther Price was the sixth largest chocolate company in the United States, with 87 stores in five states, including four just in Dayton.
Fuyao
In the summer and fall of 2013, there were indications that a big manufacturer was looking at Dayton sites to possibly open an operation. In the fall of 2013, Cao Dewang, chairman of Fuyao Glass Industry Group, a Chinese maker of automotive glass, met with U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Cincinnati. Not long after, the city of Moraine applied to Montgomery County for development dollars, in a bid to bring a big company to a former General Motors plant.
Still, no one publicly confirmed anything.
In early January 2014, all became clear. In an announcement at the Ohio Statehouse, Cao and Gov. John Kasich revealed that Fuyao wanted to build a glass-making operation in part of Moraine’s former GM plant, serving Fuyao’s U.S. customers.
The company wanted to hire at least 800 workers, and the state said the project was one of the biggest Chinese manufacturing investments east of the Mississippi River — and the biggest ever in the state.
In May, Cao handed a $15 million check to developer and local property owner Stuart Lichter, buying 1.2 million square feet of the Moraine plant.
Since then, the number of workers Fuyao expects to hire has grown to about 1,000, and the company is working with Sinclair Community College and Ohio Means Jobs-Montgomery County to hire the first wave of workers for the Moraine operation.
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