Stanley Black & Decker

All Stanley employees share a common vision: To please our customers so well that our products are their first choice. As a resource for customers around the globe, we are committed to providing: innovative products which are appropriately tailored to meet regional needs throughout the world; outstanding customer service and effective marketing support; specialized products to fulfill individual customer requirements; a company-wide commitment to rigid environmental and quality standards for our manufacturing--worldwide. The company was founded in 1843 by Frederick T. Stanley, a 41-year-old merchant and manufacturer whose previous work experience included stints as a clerk on a Connecticut River steamboat and as an itinerant peddler in the South. In 1831, Stanley, in partnership with his younger brother William Stanley, had opened a small facility in New Britain, Connecticut, for the manufacture of house trimmings and door locks. Though the business failed to survive the Panic of 1837, it seemed to have served as the prototype for a second manufacturing venture in New Britain--Stanley's Bolt Manufactory--which Frederick Stanley, again in concert with his brother, established in 1843. The establishment of this "manufactory" marks the official beginning of the Stanley story. The company's present name was adopted in 1852, when the Stanley brothers--along with five neighbors--were granted a charter of incorporation by the state of Connecticut for a newly organized firm, The Stanley Works. This corporation, initially capitalized at $30,000, was to be directed by Frederick T. Stanley, who was named its first president. During its early years Stanley was one of hundreds of similar companies in antebellum America producing hardware and builders' goods. Frederick Stanley was not unique in perceiving an entrepreneurial opening for such goods in a nation growing and industrializing as rapidly as the United States. There were scores of shops similar to his in Connecticut alone. If Frederick Stanley had an early competitive advantage, at least locally, it may have been in his manufactory's power source, a single-cylinder high-pressure steam engine, which he had purchased from the firm of William Burdon of Brooklyn. This relatively sophisticated engine enabled Stanley's Bolt Manufactory and, later, The Stanley Works, to produce goods--whether bolts, T-hinges, or wrought-iron straps--in a more capital-intensive and efficient way than was the case in less automated shops in the area. To say that the firm's rise postdated the Civil War is not to imply that the war itself was directly or fundamentally responsible. More significant than any war-induced demand for Stanley's products were deep-seated economic forces related to industrialization and increased market size and integration. Productivity gains made possible through mechanization and the creation, via the railroad, of an embryonic national market transformed the U.S. business environment in the late 19th century, presenting new opportunities to--and posing new problems for--most U.S. manufacturers. Alfred D. Chandler describes this transformation in his The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business . In order to exploit new production and marketing possibilities and to overcome problems arising from oversupply and greater competition, Stanley developed new business strategies and structures. In so doing, it integrated and expanded its operations, and employed new productivity-enhancing and competition-dampening methods of production, marketing, and organization. Such policies resulted in the dramatic growth of The Stanley Works. Frederick T. Stanley seems to have had little to do with the company's rapid postwar ascent; from the 1860s to the time of his death in 1883, he increasingly withdrew from active business operations, devoting more of his time to politics and civic affairs in New Britain. The animating spirit behind Stanley's rise was William H. Hart, w