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How did this little giant in consumer marketing get its start? Put up your feet for a minute and enjoy a piece of American and Canadian history. The year was 1832. Oneida Castle, a small village in central New York was the setting. A young hunter and trapper named Sewell Newhouse worked in his father's blacksmith shop to craft guns and traps for his own use which quickly became the envy of every Indian in the nearby reservation of Oneida. Fashioning parts from worn-out scythes, axe blades, and blacksmith scraps, Newhouse worked his mechanical genius into a thriving business trading traps for furs with the Indians. When the Oneida Community, the first American experiment with communal living moved to the banks of the Oneida Creek, Newhouse became a convert and joined. When the Commune members failed to find farming profitable enough to sustain them, Newhouse taught all members, children as well as adults, to manufacture steel traps. Local sales were strong; the community really began to thrive when the traps were taken to Chicago and sold to the Hudson Bay Company as well as other buyers of Hardware. It has been said that fur was such a lucrative trade that much of our nation's and Canada's growth to the west could be attributed to trappers who worked trap lines across the American west in the late 1800's. Indeed the reputation of steel traps reached around the globe as they became a benchmark for quality in Russia and Scandinavia. Business expanded, and factories were built in Sherrill, New York, and later in Niagara Falls, Canada. In 1896, the same year that Oneida began manufacturing in Canada, the Animal Trap Company began manufacturing mouse and rat traps in Abington, IL. A few years prior, in 1890, John M. Mast of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had also created an extremely popular spring mousetrap which became the standard for mouse traps (and amazingly similar to those today). He soon added rat traps to his line and was so successful that in 1905 he acquired the Abington, Illinois company and called the merged entity the Animal Trap Company. In 1907, Oneida's secured control of the Animal Trap Company, dropped its name and continued to operate the trapping portion of their business in Lititz, Pennsylvania and Niagara Falls, Ontario. In 1924, C. M. Woolworth a descendent of the commune, and two other relatives bought the trap business and revived the old name, changing it to Animal Trap Company of America. In 1940, C. M. Woolworth could see that the war would dramatically affect demand for fur and, thus, steel traps. Within months he, along with other innovative and entrepreneurial individuals, transformed the enterprise into a war machine. Army cots, coat hooks, fastening devices for airplane parts, fuse plugs, wire springs for parachutes and bullet cores of several calibers were all manufactured in the Lititz plant. In 1943, Under-Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson awarded the Animal Trap Company the Army-Navy "E" award for "Excellence" in the production of war equipment. Following the war, management steered the company into a new era of diversification. A broad array of fishing and hunting products -- boats, rods, reels, bait buckets and tackle boxes as well as decoys and gun cases -- were designed and marketed. Innovation was championed by a new group of young managers directed by Richard G. Woolworth, son of the chairman. The company was renamed Woodstream Corporation and went public in 1966. In the 1970's the Havahart® cage trap business was purchased. Changing With the Times Diversification in the 60's and 70's was followed by consolidation in the 80's. When Woodstream was purchased by EKCO Group, Inc., of Nashua, New Hampshire in 1989 much of the consolidation was complete. Harry Whaley, the company's new president, brainstormed with other executives; they wanted to build on the companies strengths and position its brands in growth categories. As a result the two new missions were born and the positions "Victor® ... world's leader in non-poisonous/least toxic pest control" and "Havahart® ...caring control for pets and wildlife" were initiated. The company made strategic shifts in resources by adding experts in pest control and entomology; they received significant home office funding to build state-of-the art laboratories for insects and rodents and invested to improve quality and expand capacity in their manufacturing. Furthermore, Whaley championed a cultural shift and brought in the Simplex "Creative Problem Solving" technology which helped all personnel better define, understand and prioritize the challenges for the next century. In 1999 EKCO Group, Inc was acquired by Corning due to Corning’s interest in EKCO’s franchise in kitchen gadgets and utensils. Woodstream was a non-core asset in this transaction thus the current management team along with a private venture capital partner was able to acquire the company and take it private. They say if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. As usual “they” are misinformed however clarity of vision combined with effective strategies, processes and people has successfully expanded on the heritage of the humble mouse trap.
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