Starett Acquisition Llc history

In 1868, Starrett became general agent and superintendent of the Athol Machine Co. of Athol, Massachusetts, incorporated with the purpose of manufacturing his inventions.

The first of these devices, patented in 1879, was a combination square that contained a steel rule with a sliding head.

Founded in 1880, the L.S. Starrett Co. manufactures more than 5,000 industrial, professional, and consumer products, but is perhaps best known for its precision hand tools, some of which are considered virtual works of art.

Ambitiously seeking out new markets for his inventions, he made his name known worldwide by establishing agencies in London and Paris in 1882.

Paul Starrett got his start in construction in Chicago in 1887 with Burnham and Root, which designed and built some of the earliest skyscrapers.

The enterprise was incorporated in 1900, with Starrett as president and treasurer; along with him, four other members constituted the stockholders and directors.

By 1906, Starrett was employing about 1,000 workers in the Athol factory and a caliper-manufacturing plant in Springfield, Massachusetts.

L.S. Starrett Co. reported assets of $8.6 million in 1918.

By the time its founder died in 1922, the Athol factory was being hailed as the largest plant in the world wholly devoted to making fine mechanical tools.

When L.S. Starrett was reincorporated in 1929, its assets had fallen to $4.8 million and the number of employees to about 720.

The following year net income passed $2 million for the first time since 1930.

Starrett later wrote that he “suffered a rather severe nervous breakdown” and blamed William’s death in 1932 on overwork.

In 1934, as the nation was slowly emerging from the depths of the Great Depression, assets were down to $3.8 million and employment to 402.

In 1935, Starrett acquired the "Last Word" indicator business of Henry A. Lowe Co. in Cleveland, Ohio, and moved its equipment to the Athol factory.

Starrett, Paul, Changing the Skyline, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938.

Net sales advanced to a peak of $12.9 million in fiscal 1943.

Half the company's shares were being held by present and retired employees under a retirement-benefits plan adopted in 1946.

In 1947 Levitt & Sons began a housing development called Levittown on former potato fields near Hicksville, Long Island, hiring subcontractors to do the job, assembling an entire block at a time.

By mid-1950 Levitt & Sons was the leading housebuilder in the United States.

By the end of 1951 there were 17,450 homes and 75,000 people in Levittown.

In fiscal 1954 (the year ended February 28, 1954), Levitt & Sons attained peak sales of $48.8 million and a record profit of $3.7 million.

In fiscal year 1957—Starrett's best year of the decade—the company earned $1.5 million on net sales of $16.2 million.

1958: The company founds subsidiaries in Brazil and Scotland.

In 1959, the company purchased Bristol Engineering & Manufacturing Co. based in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.

The company went public in 1960, but William Levitt retained more than half of the outstanding common stock.

After losing $763,000 on sales of only $15.9 million in fiscal 1961 Levitt abandoned mass construction in favor of reduced risk through diversification.

Further, Starrett acquired Rhode Island Tool Co. of Providence for shares of common stock in 1962.

At the 1963 annual meeting, McPhail unsuccessfully proposed a cumulative-voting proposal that would have made it easier for him and other minority stockholders to win seats on the company's board of directors.

Nevertheless, only 6,000 homes had been sold by late 1964.

In fiscal 1967 Levitt had record sales and income of $93.6 million and nearly $4 million, respectively.

In 1968 there were 18 smaller Levitt developments under construction, in Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Puerto Rico, and France.

In fiscal 1970, Starrett bought Herman Stone Co., a Dayton, Ohio, producer of granite slabs for measuring tables, for $308,000 worth of stock.

Sales reached $300 million in fiscal 1971.

It was made a division of Starrett and moved to Mount Airy, North Carolina, in 1972.

The company acted as general partner of the partnership that put up the equity capital for the project, which was substantially completed in 1976, and it continued as manager of the project.

In 1978 Starrett acquired Levitt Corp. for $30 million in cash, notes, and subordinated debentures.

Its attention soon turned, however, to the Iranian revolution. Its total revenues came to only $44 million that year, compared to $219 million in 1979.

Starrett lost $8.8 million in 1980 and had to restructure its debt the following year, issuing $28.3 million in preferred shares to Chemical Bank in exchange for bank loans and subordinated debentures of about $33 million.

In 1983 Starrett sold 20 percent of Levitt to raise more funds.

However, after the employee stock-ownership plan purchased 400,000 shares in the Starrett treasury in 1984, the company bought 341,514 shares from stockholders at $30 a share to avoid dilution of the existing shareholders' voting power.

By 1985, the Starrett headquarters was a little-changed four-story brick factory and the company's inventory of little metal parts was piled haphazardly into wooden boxes.

1986: Evans Rule Co. is acquired.

The subsidiary became profitable again that year, and its sales passed the $100 million mark in 1987.

The real estate developers Seymour and Paul Milstein increased their share of the company from 7 to 25 percent in December 1988, paying American Financial Corp. $6 million for the stock.

As half-owner of Roosevelt Island Associates (which it partly sold for $20 million in 1989), it built 1,100 housing units.

The Starrett Story, Athol, Mass.: L.S. Starrett Co., 1991.

In 1992 the company completed and sold a 224-unit residential rental community in Boca Raton, Florida.

Starrett's business was cyclical, and the company endured troughs like the drop in earnings in 1993.

These foreign operations accounted for 26 percent of the company's sales in 1994.

Starrett Housing Corp. was renamed Starrett Corp. in 1995.

Starrett’s long-term obligations came to $57.9 million in March 1997.

The company had continued to invest in its facilities and equipment, spending some $20 million over 1999.

Starrett began laying off employees in 2000.

The new devices turned out to be plagued with problems that made them unreliable, and in March 2001 the company began replacing them at no charge to its customers.

Yet sales were flat for 2002, and the company ended the fiscal year with a net loss of $380,000.

The federal investigation yielded nothing damaging, and it was terminated in December 2003 with no charges filed.

2004: The company closes several of its warehouses and its plants in Skipton, England, and Alum Bank, Pennsylvania, moving the business offshore to the Dominican Republic.