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About
We are a single-location fastener distributor north of Dayton, family owned since 1979, selling directly to the manufacturers, shops and maintenance crews within about a half day's drive of our dock.
History
Ray Kessler spent eleven years selling for a steel service center before he opened Paragon Fasteners in a rented bay on Aviation Way in 1979. The pitch was narrow and specific: the tool and die shops around Dayton needed forty pieces of something, and every supplier in the region wanted to sell them a keg.
The company grew on that one idea. The auto plants and tier suppliers around Dayton pulled us into production work through the eighties and nineties, and the collapse of that base after 2008 pushed us back toward the job shops, fabricators and plant maintenance crews we started with. It was a hard decade and it left us with a customer list that is broader and considerably harder to lose.
Ray's daughter Anne Kessler-Doyle took over as president in 2011. We moved into the current 62,000 square foot building in 2016, two doors down from the original bay.
Hex Cap
Hex Nut
Washer
Socket
Cotter
Dowel
Carriage
Wood
Spring
Nyloc
Anchor
Rod
Forty pieces is still an order here. No minimum order value and no small-order fee — the same terms the shops got out of the rented bay in 1979.
| Founded | 1979 |
|---|---|
| Ownership | Family owned, second generation |
| President | Anne Kessler-Doyle |
| Locations | One — Vandalia, Ohio |
| Facility | 62,000 sq ft, owned |
| Employees | 31 |
| Active SKUs | 18,400 |
| Certification | ISO 9001:2015 |
| Service area | Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky |
18-8
Metric
Lock
Nyloc
Carriage
Wing
Rod
Machine
Tek
Anchor
Eye
A325
18,400 active SKUs, weighted toward the sizes that empty a bin first.
Who you'll deal with
There is no call queue and no ticket number. You get the same person every time, and she remembers what you run.
Your point of contact for quotes, stock checks, orders, certs, expediting and freight. One desk and one inbox, so pricing, substitutions and revised quantities stay in a single thread and nothing has to be explained twice.
How we work
If we can't supply exactly what you called out, you hear about it before it ships. A grade 5 in place of a grade 8 has ended up in a press before, and we're not doing that to anybody.
Grade · Finish · Origin / as you called it out
No minimum order value, no small-order fee. The forty-piece order is how nearly every long account here started, including the largest one.
40 pieces · 40,000 pieces / same desk, same day
Aerospace registrations, exotic alloys and very high volume production are not what we're built for. We'll point you somewhere that is.
Inch · Metric · Stainless · Structural / what we actually stock
We're ten minutes off I-75 at exit 63, just north of the Dayton airport. Customers walk the warehouse regularly — ask for whoever you've been dealing with.