Innovating the way to the top

By Emma Peterson. 

With almost 75 years in the industry, Malco Products is dedicated to listening to the industry and creating the solutions they need. 

In Season 6, Episode 7 of Roofing Road Trips®, Heidi J. Ellsworth spoke with Rich Benninghoff and Rebecca Talbot of Malco Products. Rich has been with Malco for three years now and is their president and CEO. He has been all over in the industry, from marketing and sales to management and manufacturing. Rebecca joined Malco in 2023 and “comes from a background of B2B marketing and specific efforts made around branding, campaigns, promotions, as well as channel strategy.” 

Malco was founded in 1950 to build tools for an emerging sheet metal industry. Rich explained, “Our founder wanted to help the industry and the folks that were working with that sheet metal product in the industry by designing and developing tools to make their jobs more efficient and safer.” In the new century, they experienced a new shift, Rich explained: “This idea of employee ownership or an ownership mentality came to the company based on what was first a family owned business.” But through that shift Malco maintained the same core value — innovation.  

And Malco isn’t limiting their support of innovation to within their team. Rebecca explained that their future goals are “to support the customer journey from the minute they choose to enter a trade to the minute that they decide to exit.” For Malco, this looks like making sure people across the industry have the tools they need to make their lives easier and the training to use them effectively. One way they are ensuring they will keep meeting this need and helping the industry through innovation is listening to what people are looking for. Rebecca elaborated, “We consistently get field feedback when John is at Skills USA and we are always open to new ideas. In fact, we just had a new idea contest and awarded a first and second place winners.”  

You can submit your own product ideas to Malco on their website! 

Read the transcript, Listen the podcast or Watch the webinar to learn more about Malco and their innovations in the industry.