Measures approx 7” x 3” x 3”
No chips or cracks. No lid. A bit of history on General Housewares Corp:
General Housewares Corporation is a leading manufacturer and marketer of cookware, cutlery, kitchen tools, wood products, and cutting tools for the housewares and craft/hardware markets. Its broad range of products are designed to "delight and excite" the consumer, offering both a distinctive appearance and superior quality. The company, with three factories in Indiana and Illinois, is the only domestic manufacturer of enamelware, a porcelain-on-steel type of cookware. It also enjoys a leading market share in kitchen cutlery, through its Chicago Cutlery line, which has received a top quality rating from Consumer Reports and is the company's foremost revenue generator. Other key businesses include OXO International, a division headquartered in New York that imports and markets ergonomically designed kitchen tools and gadgets, and the Olfa Products Group, a division headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, that imports and markets craft and industrial precision cutting tools.
Early History
The multiproduct housewares company was founded in 1967 by Jack Muller, a then 43-year-old Harvard M.B.A. and former management trainee who wanted to leave his position as a marketing executive at General Foods to start his own company. He solicited the financial backing of Laird Incorporated, a group of investors with ties to the du Pont family, who raised $1 million in equity and borrowed another $5 million. Finding the proper channel to direct his entrepreneurial energy and capital, however, proved to be a more difficult task. Several discussions with the Laird group had failed to produce a workable idea. "We talked about a number of categories," Muller told Forbes writer Laura Rohmann, "and for one reason or another we couldn't make anything work." Desperate, Muller drove to New York, seeking the solution to his problem in a Macy's department store. Eschewing the sophisticated marketing research techniques he had learned in business school, he went to the top floor of the store, vowing to find a business before he left that day. "I went all the way to the bottom, and as I came down the escalator and saw the housewares area, I said to myself, 'Well, this has got to be it,"' he explained to Rohmann.
In 1967, Muller, with $6 million at his disposal, acted on his impulse and purchased J.R. Clark, a struggling, $8 million, Minnesota manufacturer of outdoor furniture, ladders, and ironing boards. It did not take long, though, for Muller to discover the limitations of the company he had acquired. In an age where fashions were dominated by polyester, ironing had fallen out of favor with the general public. Ironing boards and ladders, then, came to "represent drudgery or work versus fun," Muller told Rohmann. The new owner quickly reasoned that such a negative product identification would prove an insurmountable obstacle to the profitability of his business. With the goal of selecting a product line that consumers would enjoy buying, Muller decided to build his company around a line of enamel cookware--the ceramic-on-steel pots and pans used by U.S. families since the 19th century. And in 1968 he purchased a manufacturer of kitchen ceramics to get him started. The following year, while making its initial public offering, General Housewares acquired an enamelware importer, adding to the base that would one day stand as the last domestic manufacturer in the industry.
Muller's initial decision to focus on cookware and table-top giftware proved to be a sound one. By 1972, his company had surpassed the $50-million mark in annual sales and was approaching $4 million in earnings. Along the way, though, he attempted to expand the business at a faster rate by diversifying into several different product lines, ranging from kitchen stools to novelty candles. Many of these products performed poorly, leading the company into a period of high-cost debt. What is more, seasonal products such as outdoor grills became costly to inventory as interest rates skyrocketed during the early 1970s. Having failed to see that the credit crunch and inflation were approaching, Muller found himself saddled with a high debt load and businesses that were unable to carry their weight. By the time the recession of 1973 and 1974 had run its course, bumping up interest rates to 17.5 percent, the company was on the verge of extinction. Earnings had eroded to losses of $1.9 million in 1973 and $7 million the following year; liabilities now outstripped assets.
To stay in business, General Housewares had to sell off parts of the company, such as its steel kitchen furniture business, to raise cash. By 1975, all that remained were a few parts of its original cookware, giftware, and furniture businesses. Although the streamlining process was painful, it did allow the company to strengthen its balance sheet. Between 1974 and 1977, the company was able to cut its long-term debt down to 50 percent of capitalization, while resuscitating income to $4.8 million. The road to recovery, though, was a slow one. The growth pattern for revenue and profits was not consistent during the remainder of the decade.