Five generations.124 years.Same job.

April 1, 1902. New York City. A partnership is formed at 99 Chambers Street between three men: a 24-year-old fresh out of Brown University named William J. Tingue, alongside William E. Brown and Ammiel F. Decker.

Their job was to sell what the Tingue Manufacturing Co. of Seymour, Connecticut made: wool felt, printers’ blankets, tapes, litho flannels, molleton and moleskin. The Tingue family had already been a major factor in American textiles for thirty years before young William opened the door to that first office.

The first order on record? Ten pads of white felt, shipped to Wallach Laundry in NYC. Family legend says William’s wife Lilian had come home from the laundry with her clothes badly pressed.

Ten pads of felt. One laundry in Manhattan. That’s where this whole thing began.

For most of its history this company was actually two: Tingue, Brown & Co. and Talley Machinery, both founded in 1902, both with a hand on the wheel of the commercial laundry industry. In 2016, after twenty-five years under the same ownership, the family folded them into a single name.

Today, Tingue is a global organization built around the distribution, installation, and service of hundreds of products for commercial laundries and a long list of related industries. Metal fabrication and machining. Textile converting. Product design and development. The reps still install what they spec.

Led by David Tingue, fourth-generation CEO, alongside President Ty Acton. Recently recognized by TRSA, the industry’s trade association, with the Responsible Supplier Assurance Program designation. With John Tingue, the fifth generation, taking the stage at industry conferences about where AI and automation take a 124-year-old company next.