Philly business specializes in police badges

Soldering torch in hand, Elyse Aion sat at the workbench at the rear of her store in Rockledge, affixing numbers to a police badge.

The irony of it made the 64-year-old Upper Dublin resident laugh.

Years ago, she had been a hippie living in San Francisco - in Haight-Ashbury, epicenter of the counter-culture movement, where, Aion noted, "nobody liked the police."

Now, they are her bread and butter at Berben Insignia Co., a tiny business with a massive footprint supplying badges to police, fire and security departments, as well as the movie and TV industries.

"Who cares about stinking badges? I do now," Aion said, paraphrasing the well-known line from the 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, later parodied in the hilarious Mel Brooks movie, Blazing Saddles.

How does a woman who at one time was not keen on authority figures, one with a bachelor's degree in individual and family studies from Pennsylvania State University and a master's in health education from St. Joseph's University and a long career as a health and wellness expert, wind up running a company catering to law enforcement?

Because her father asked her to - and her sister, Elayne, had had enough after 11 years.

Herman Aion bought Berben in 1962, 54 years after a German immigrant who worked for a time as a DuPont Co. chemist started the business in Center City. He would add another line to the badge company - uniforms.

In the 1970s, Berben was displaced from Filbert Street by a commuter tunnel, moving to 12th and Cherry Streets. Another construction project, the Convention Center, prompted the sale of the uniform business in 1987 and another relocation for the badge business, to the tiny store and workshop on Fox Chase Road where Elyse Aion now carries on her late father's legacy. In 2001, Herman Aion died of a brain tumor at age 74.

"He taught me the business, and I taught him how to use computers," Elyse Aion said. "That enabled us to go anywhere and everywhere."

Indeed, two years after she joined her father behind the counter at Berben in 1998, a badge order came in from the police chief of Kotzebue, Alaska. A copy of the $1,420 check - Herman Aion didn't take credit cards; his daughter does - remains in the store to this day.

"My dad was so proud of it," she said.

With a background in the jewelry business, Herman Aion (and now his daughter) offered while-you-wait badge repairs, as well as personalized engraving on a range of accessories, including badge cases, name plates, retirement plaques, and lapel pins. Berben designs, personalizes and repairs badges made by the highly regarded V.H. Blackinton & Co. Inc. in Massachusetts.

Ocean City's police badge is Elyse Aion's favorite, a virtual guide to the Jersey Shore town with its powder-blue background, a swimmer, marine life, a glimpse of boardwalk, and a ship's steering wheel.

Herman Aion literally wrote the specifications for Philadelphia's police badges, Elyse Aion said. But that work, like any badge job, is no longer a given for Berben.

Many municipalities now require that such acquisitions be put out for bid, a process sometimes competitively prohibitive for Berben because Elyse Aion won't buy from China-based manufacturers of lesser quality and cheaper prices.

To further keep expenses down, some towns are reusing badges of retired officers. A typical shield from Berben starts at $60.

Last year, sales at the three-employee company slightly exceeded $250,000. Elyse Aion envisions accessory sales becoming a bigger part of the bottom line to offset losses in badge work.

Personalized service has kept Edda Lewis, systems administrator for Temple University's police department, buying badges from Berben for the last 28 years.

"There is definite respect between us," Lewis said. "I'm not just a client."

And a badge is not just a badge, said Elayne Aion, who since leaving the family business has started her own, the Dovetail Artisans gift shop in Glenside.

"It's so essential to the identity of police officers, even more so than a gun," she said.

Or, as Amtrak police investigator Mike Baker put it: "It's what we stand for." That's why he wouldn't entrust the department's badge work to just anyone.

"I can get badges from anybody," Baker said. "I choose to go to Elyse."

Says the woman who "grudgingly" joined her father 18 years ago to sell them: "This is the greatest little business ever. I actually am the happy worker.

"Who would have thought?"

Elyse Aion works on a police badge and describes some of the other items made at Berben Insignia Co. www.inquirer.com/businessEndText

215-854-2466 @dmastrull