Safco History

"My father taught me that the best way to grow our business was by earning reasonable profits, not by being greedy. I learned to try to treat each customer, employee and supplier the exact same way I would want to be treated myself." Ken Saffir

Safco was founded in 1945 by Harold Saffir. Born into a poor immigrant family, Harold worked his way through college, and earned a degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago. While working full time as a high school teacher, he started a small business to manufacture and distribute dental anesthetics.

Harold's son Ken joined the business in 1975 bringing with him new ideas and a youthful flair for marketing by direct mail. When Ken composed the first full-fledged Safco catalog in 1989, it featured less than 2,000 products on its 36 pages. As Safco grew, so did Ken, becoming president in 1992.

Over the years, Ken worked hard to build strong relationships with more and more manufacturers, so that Safco could offer more choices to our customers. He focused passionately on making it faster and easier than anywhere else for dentists to find and order what they need. And Ken topped it all off by hiring the friendliest, most helpful customer service representatives in the industry.

Harold (Ken's father) would be so proud of where we've come, and how we got here. Our home today is a state-of-the-art 160,000 sq. ft. building outside Chicago with 63 terrific employees, and over 18,000 inventory items featured on our fast, easy website, and in our over 500-page printed catalog.

We cherish our reputation for honest, straightforward prices; friendly, courteous service; and easy, no pressure ordering. And we set very high quality standards for our private label products; you'll only find our name on dental supplies we would trust for use on our own children.

These are traditions that go back over 70 years, and we're not about to change them.