Note: The following is a republished excerpt from the Lockwood Hardware Manufacturing Company’s Lockwood – The story of its past, the basis for its future. Published in 1953, and based almost entirely off of literature produced for Lockwood’s 1952 sales convention, it recounts the history of the Lockwood Hardware Manufacturing Company from 1834 until 1952.
By 1953, the Lockwood Hardware Manufacturing Company, then a division of the Independent Lock Company with both being headquartered in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, fielded branch offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, and Selma, Alabama along with five manufacturing plants in Fitchburg and one in Selma.
We have made no changes to this excerpt and what you see is exactly how it was printed in 1953, albeit in a different medium.
Chapter Six, The Lockwood Hardware Manufacturing Company 1941 to 1945
THIS PERIOD was featured by major changes in sales policy and sales personnel. One weakness in selling policy up to that time had been direct bidding on contract work, which was uneconomical and unsound.
After a long and thoughtful consideration and despite the likelihood of losing business because of inadequate distribution, the company faced the issue and established a definite sales policy of selling its products (except in New York City where, up to the time of printing, it has not yet been fully possible) strictly through franchised distributors. This step is recorded as courageous at that particular time because of the lack of distributors to pick up the business dropped. Business, while better than in the years described in Chapter Five, was certainly not that much better that the move could be well afforded. Continue reading