Kent Knives - F.W. Woolworth

Codger_64

Codger_64

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I find that knowing the story behind a knife makes collecting and ownership more enjoyable. Sometimes we luck out and get the personal story of first purchase and ownership from the original buyer, but most often not. Then it takes a bit of sleuthing to get the full story, particularly with privately branded knives (SFO’s or “Special Factory Orders”). Who made the knife and for whom? When did they make it and what were they trying to achieve during the market that prevailed at the time?

I recently bought such a knife. The stamping is currently not very popular among those who know, or don’t know it’s origins, much like the Sears Craftsman knives were a few years ago. The marking is KENT - N.Y. CITY - U.S.A.



As you can see, this is a fixed blade hunting or "Sportsman's" pattern knife, far less common than the Kent pocket knives.

Now, most of us know that few, if any knives were actually manufactured in New York City, though there did exist a section of one street known as “Cutler’s Row” where many importers, jobbers, and manufacturers had their offices located.

When we look up the mark in Goins Encyclopedia Of Cutlery Markings (1998), we see that he attributes the mark to A. Kastor & Brothers (Camillus) as used on knives manufactured circa 1931-1955 for F. W. Woolworth.





Continued....

Codger
 
As with Sears Roebuck & Company, F. W. Woolworths was the brainchild of one merchant pioneer who based his store on a successful formula. Frank Winfield Woolworth (1852-1919) was the originator of "five-and-ten-cent" stores. Frank was a farm boy in upstate New York who began his merchant career as a clerk in a drygoods store in Watertown New York From a website archive:

In 1873, he started working in a drygoods store in Watertown, New York. He worked for free for the first three months, because the owner claimed "why should I pay you for teaching the business". He remained there for 6 years. There he observed a passing fad: Leftover items were priced at five cents and placed on a table. Woolworth liked the idea, so he borrowed $300 to open a store where all items were priced at five cents.

Impressed with the success of a five-cent clearance sale, he conceived the novel idea of establishing a store to sell a variety of items in volume at that price. With $300 in inventory advanced to him by his employer, Woolworth started a small store in Utica in 1879, but it soon failed. By 1881, however, Woolworth had two successful stores operating in Pennsylvania. By adding ten-cent items, he was able to increase his inventory greatly and thereby acquired a unique institutional status most important for the success of his stores.

Woolworth's first five-cent store, established in Utica, New York on February 22, 1879, failed within weeks. At his second store, established in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in April 1879, he expanded the concept to include merchandise priced at ten cents. The second store was successful, and Woolworth and his brother, Charles Sumner Woolworth, opened a large number of five-and-ten-cent stores. His original employer was made a partner.

The growth of Woolworth's chain was rapid. Capital for new stores came partly from the profits of those already in operation and partly from investment by partners whom Woolworth installed as managers of the new units. Initially, many of the partners were Woolworth's relatives and colleagues.

Convinced that the most important factor in ensuring the success of the chain was increasing the variety of goods offered, Woolworth in 1886 moved to Brooklyn, New York, to be near wholesale suppliers. He also undertook the purchasing for the entire chain. A major breakthrough came when he decided to stock candy and was able to bypass wholesalers and deal directly with manufacturers. Aware of the importance of the presentation of goods, Woolworth took the responsibility for planning window and counter displays for the whole chain and devised the familiar red store front which became its institutional hallmark.

The success of the chain between 1890 and 1910 was phenomenal. The company had 631 outlets doing a business of $60,558,000 annually by 1912. In that year Woolworth merged with five of his leading competitors, forming a corporation capitalized at $65 million. The next year, at a cost of $13.5 million, he built the Woolworth Building in downtown New York, the tallest skyscraper in the world at the time. Cass Gilbert was the architect, and it was engineered by Gunvald Aus. Another rare fact about the Woolworth Building -- it served as the company's headquarters right up until Woolworth's 1997 declaration of bankruptcy. By 1997, the original chain he founded had been reduced to 400 stores, and other divisions of the company began to be more profitable than the original chain. The original chain went out of business on July 17th, 1997, as the firm began its transition into Foot Locker, Inc.
The UK stores continued operating (albeit under separate ownership since 1982) after the US operation ceased under the Woolworth name and now trade as Woolworths.

Vital statistics 1929
total annual sales in the US and Canada $272,754,045
11,000 bales of cotton used to weave towels alone, with 2,000 looms working 24 hours a day and employing 1,000 people
over a million mousetraps sold every year
100,000,000 shaves with Woolworths blades during 1929
over 1,000,000 nets and 5,000,000 printed curtains sold
7,500,000 tons of yarn used to make men's socks
90,000,000 lunches served to customers during the year
4,000 miles of pencils if laid end to end and 300 miles of pen points
33,000 miles of garter elastic



Continued...

Codger
 
Great Stuff Codger!

I used to shop at "Woolies" in England as a kid.
 
I did as well in the Arkansas Missisippi River Delta town closest to the farm where I grew up, and in the "big city" across the river, Memphis. Bins and bins of goods where it was not impossible for me to buy a Christmas gift for every kid in my first grade class for four or five dollars total. My wage at the time was between 10-25 cents an hour, so even at the "five and dime", I selected carefully.

Codger

PS - visit the Walton's store in downtown Rogers, the first of Sam Walton's stores which led to the Wal-Marts of today. It is an interesting museum.
 
Well, many retailers and manufacturers bit the big one in the Great Depression of 1929-1932. The list of cutlerys and hardware jobbers which closed is large.

1929: Remington sold out to the Dupont Company.
1930: Schatt-Morgan Knife Company filed for bankruptcy.
1931: New York Knife Company went out of business, the factory was closed due to bankruptcy.

However, some not only survived but thrived. Woolworth's and A. Kastor & Brothers/Camillus were such companies. Their success was largely due to innovative thinkers able to meet a vastly changed marketing landscape.

Circa 1931-1955...? Oh, how can I tell a story of the American knife industry without mentioning Albert Baer!

Albert M. Baer was put in charge of sales in 1930. Albert signed George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth to endorse autographed baseball bat figural knife for Kastor Bros., first of many endorsements. In order to permit Baer to be a stockholder, Alfred B. Kastor sold him 50 shares of his common stock

Under Baer's management of sales, Camillus manufactured KENT brand knives for F.W. Woolworth's beginning in 1931.

Continued...

Codger
 
Albert Baer was indeed a visionary of his time.
He built one hell of an empire in the next 50 years!

Albert was the one who hired me in 1979.
 
I agree, Phil. Albert was a business whiz, read buyers and markets quite accurately. In fact, here is an excerpt from his unpublished memoirs which illustrates how he curried favor with the buyers which earned their loyalty to Baer, the salesman, even more than to the company he happened to represent.

"My habit was to go to the Woolworth Company every Christmas and every New Year and thank them for the business they gave us. This started iD 1923 because I got the inspiration that any company with the number of stores that Woolworth had, should be the outlet for the products that we made at Camillus Cutlery, regardless of the fact they had a limit of 10<:;in the east, and 15<:;in the west.
George's predecessor, Mr. P. G. Franz, lived in Buck Hill, Pennsylvania, and he had an apartment at 86th Street and Central Park West. He traveled to Europe regularly to their main headquarters in Crayfell, Germany and was punctilious about never going to lunch with anybody or not even accepting a book when he sailed on the Europa. P.G. liked me and although I had practically nothing to sell, I still called on him and was particularly fond of his assistant, a woman 10 years my senior, named Mrs. Kissack. Mrs. Kissack always tipped me off when I phoned for an appointment as to whether P.G. was in good mood or not. All the years I called on him, he called me "Mr. Baer" and he was always "Mr. Franz."

One day Alfred Kastor showed me a sample of a two-blade metal handle Jackknife that
Mr. Gerling had sent us, and quoted us 3~ a dozen. Now the tariff on importing knives advanced considerably with knives when sold at over 39 a dozen both ad valorem and specific. If you don't know customs terms, ad valorem is a percentage of the value and specific is a set amount per knife. 3~ knives, FOB Germany, landed in this country at about
57.
I never asked Alfred anything but took the samples down to P.G., told him what we paid for them, where we bought them. He knew Gerling and P. G. wrote up a general order to be shipped to all stores for 10,000 gross. Big deal! He paid me 85 a dozen. I brought the order back to the office and I thought Alfred would flip. He practically made a special trip to Germany and placed the order, and we were in business with Woolworth selling them 10 cent pocket knives. They sold like hot cakes and in the midst of the sale, over the Wall Street ticker, came word that Woolworth was about to sell 20 cent merchandise. Here was the opportunity of a lifetime. Now we could make a Camillus product in the USA and boy, we needed the business. I was down to see France the same day word came out, and he agreed that we should submit some samples, for he said he wanted to get prices and samples from other factories, particularly a company in Providence called Imperial, for they had been trying to make 10 cent knives in the United States for him and he heard that they gave good value.

I had no sooner returned to my office that I had a phone call from him asking me to come back. When I did, he was shaking with anger. "What do you think?" he said. “The American Cutlery Industry, led by Domenick Fazzano of Imperial have lodged a complaint claiming that the 10 cent knives which you sold me were undervalued, and we have to go to Customs Court to fight the case. How dare they on one hand come to try to sell me, and on the other hand act in this underhanded way?"

I told P.G. not to worry. We had done nothing illegal. We would stand behind him and Woolworth and fight this case. I suggested that he get two samples from Imperial as though nothing had happened, so we would see what they were going to offer competitors. He smiled and said “Wonderful. We’ll, fight fire with fire! “ It was not long before we had the sample roll of the 10 knives Imperial had submitted to the Woolworth Company. I took the knives to the factory. We discussed the quantities involved, took the prices that Imperial had quoted France and duplicated the patterns as best as we could, and down I went to see P.G. I got him to pay us a little bit more than
Imperial because we made a better product. He paid us $1.505 a dozen and he sold them
for 20 cents each.

When the knives hit the stores, they were a sensation. The sales were enormous. You could go and count how many they sold per hour. In fact, I did just that, and we started to mechanize the Camillus factory as a result of the Woolworth order. P.G. never told Imperial why they lost the business, for certainly had Domenick not been part of the conspiracy to embarrass me, they would have had this business.

The hearing in the Customs Court took place, and we were able to prove that there was no chicanery. The case was dismissed and with tears in his eyes, P.G. Franz looked at me and said “As long as you live, Mr. Baer, we will let you be competitive, and if you meet competition, you will always have our business.” This message he passed on to George Graff and for all the years that I was with Camillus, George lived up to P.G.’s admonition.

And in fact, when George Graff did take over as the buyer for Woolworth, he continued buying from Baer. And then in October 1940, Baer left Camillus in a tiff with the Kastor brothers. And most of the buyers, Sears Col. Tom Dunlap and Woolworth's George Graff included, followed Albert to his new company, Ulster. Another excerpt:

George Graff, the Wool-worth buyer, wrote a letter to the Board that Camillus was a ship without a rudder. That didn't sit well with Alfred Kastor, for F. W. Woolworth was their #2 client.
When George Graff became the buyer of Woolworth, I was selling several knives to him. George seemed like a nice guy. He came out of the Chicago district office. He knew about and liked ..to sell pocket knives...

Continued....

Codger
 

Kent branded pocket knives sold quite well and for many years. They were well made and yet inexpensive. Some of the designs were quite handsome and colorful. Some were utilitarian in stagged plastics. The fixed hunting blades seem to be the less common, far more so than the various patterns of slipjoints. Am I absolutely certain the example first shown above was produced for Woolworths by Camillus? No. Not until I find an example like it branded Camillus, A. Kastor & Bros., Sword Brand, XLNT, Cloverbrand, or one of the other known Kastor/Camillus stamps.

Codger
 
Great read, Mike!

When will that book be ready????

Glenn
 
glennbad said:
Great read, Mike!

When will that book be ready????

Glenn
Click to expand...

Glenn, when I began my quest I was looking at one hundred years of history. The people who made the knives, the knives, and the giants of industry who made it all work. And now with the demise of Camillus, another one hundred and thirty one years has been added. Thousands more people. Another set of industry giants tied to the Schrade history by the Baers. It is really all one history, one story, two hundred and thirty one years of it. I have scarcely absorbed the contents of the information I have gathered on Imperial Schrade, already written volumes of pattern and history research, and the Camillus material is coming in. Shall I rush it? Make it an "also-ran price guide"? Or a indepth look at the subject matter I've mentioned? Believe me, I am constantly working on "the book". You see glimpses of it here all the time on BF.com! ;)

Michael
 
Phil, When shopping in Woolies I hope you did not spend more than 6d or a shilling?

Rusty1
 
Thanks for the reply Phil, Whow a farthing! my pocket money was 2/6d not a lot to go around. :( did however get my first Richards Camp knife.

Rusty1
 
hi, i always wish somebody would do an extensive history of the kent brand, because in my opinion they were a decent knife for the price and yet there's hardly any info on their history.My questions are 1, why is the black kent fish knife easier to find than the brown delrin stag one 2, why are they so hard to find in unused condition as opposed to other knive from that era and 3-when did the woolworths stop selling them , because when id go to the woolworths where i lved in the 70s i loved that store, but was too young to remember if there were any knives.thanks
 
Codger,
That KENT hunting knife is a #5665 pattern that was introduced in 1939.

Tom Williams
 
Thanks Tom! I was hoping you would recognize it! So, there was a Camillus version of that pattern? I take it that Woolworth's did not buy and sell a lot of fixed blade hunting knives. Price point, maybe. According to the late John Goins, the Kent branded knives date 1931-1955, which may or may not be precise. Why/how did they quit selling them? Perhaps they just quit having them private branded and sold manufacturer branded knives for a while after circa 1955. Baer stated that his Ulster made some knives for Woolworths, and he sold them some Imperials later too.

Perhaps regarding the black/brown handle question, black was more popular in many areas of the country resulting in more being sold. Knife preferences, according to Baer and others was very regional. A pattern which sold like hotcakes in the Southern States would go begging in the Northern States and vice versa. Why are they mostly used? People who bought them did so because they needed a working knife at an economical price. Function was more important than appearance, though many of the Kent/Camillus knives are certainly not homely. These are just my opinions.

Michael
 
When I see the name "KENT" on a knife, I think of either the old cigarette brand ads (dates me!), or the British Kent. Perhaps it is the association with England that was sought when the name was adopted for the Woolworth knives. But I find that like the Kastor/Camillus brands of Syracuse, Camillus, Fairmount, Catskill and so forth, there is a Kent, New York. Perhaps this is where Baer found the name for the Woolworth knives. Assuming I am correct that he was the one to suggest the name to them for their privately branded knives as he had done for Sears Roebuck & Company.

Codger
 
Camillus made the #5665 pattern hunting knife for F.W. Woolworth and also made this model under the Camillus name.
The #5665 pattern was introduced in 1939 and the S-Card reads "New Hunting Knife". This was introduced as a civilian model, but was purchased by the U.S. Marine Corps in the early years of WWII before military knives were available.

Tom Williams
 
Guys, great thread on this pattern. One question, were the Marine Corp. knives marked differently, that one could ID them as military?
Thanks
Dave
 
While we are waiting for Tom to answer here is another Kent Jack knife in "end of the day" cell. (there is bound to be a better name for this pattern of the material!)



Michael
 
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