Anchor Hocking

Business on the Brink. Everybody. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Arial Casting, and today's episode is about anchor hawking, which I did not even know was a thing, but it was a request, right, It was from Kimberly Bostick. Yeah. An anchor hawking is not like, hey, folks, come see this great anchor over here on stage two. It's gonna do a performance for you. Extra x stra extra. It's actually a glass company. And I'll say, going into this, I was like, oh, okay, it's it's a glass company.

It will be a little niche thing. Maybe we'll find one or two little points we can talk about. They've had a whole bunch of brink moments. Yeah. As it turns out, the entire history of this company, you could argue was a series of brink moments, and there were more than a few occasions where with just a little extra the company could have fizzled out of business. Yeah yeah, and yet they keep going. So we're gonna go ahead

and get started. Yes, So the story of Anchor Hawking actually begins with an older company, a company that existed before that, and that was the Lancaster Carbon Company. I got all excited because I was thinking, like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I was thinking, it's gonna be about Amish. It's Lancaster, Ohio. Not that that's not exciting Ohio people, Yes it is. I just didn't know that that was a thing, and all I read about this, well, did you know, Um,

I'm going to put a little fun fact in here. Okay, did you know what the nickname of the Lancaster Carbon Company was? What's that the black Cat because of all the carbon that would line the walls, right. Yes, they called their facility the black Cat because it was it was just coded in this because because of course, when you're making carbon or glass or anything like that, you're involving furnaces giving up a lot of smoke. So, uh, I don't know, a whole lot about the Lancaster Carbon Company.

It's an older company that dated from the nineteenth century, but I don't know exactly when it was founded. It's one of those where I could not find any records about it. It's just it was just too small and too old for me to find. All I know is when it ended, which was that the company was in financial difficulty and it essentially went into receivership, meaning it was essentially under the control of somebody else after going

through the bankruptcy process US. And so then you get a guy named Isaac J. Collins who got together with precisely six of his friends six. Wow. Every single source I saw it was always like Isaac J. Collins and six friends got together and they pulled their cash and they bought the Lancaster Carbon Company for the princely sum of eight thousand dollars. Yeah. In in case you guys are curious, that's about two hundred and thirty thousand dollars

in today's money. Yes, yes, adjusting for inflation, it's nearly a quarter of a million dollars of a million. But here's the thing is that that still wasn't quite enough to get things up and running. That was enough to take it out of receivership, but they needed more for actual startup costs. So they turned to an investor named eb Good, who I think could play a guitar just like it was ringing a bell. I think it sounds

like a Charles Dickens character. That's very similar. Yeah, And he ended up contributing another seventeen thousand dollars, so more than twice what that initial investment was, almost half a million in today's money. Yes, so now we're looking at maybe like three quarters of a million dollars almost for the full startup cost here. And that's when they formed the Hawking Glass Company, and it was named the Hawking

Glass Company because it was near the Hawking River. Yeah, which again I before I read this, I just thought, wow, it's it's like that. I guess we can't call ourselves anchor Sellings. We're calling ourselves anchor Hawking. Well, they'll go through a bunch of name changes. But before that, in their first year of operation, the company produced and sold about twenty thousand dollars in glassware, which I did not adjust for inflation. But that's a whole lot of money. Yes, Uh,

But they needed more money to scale it production. So Collins got another five thousand dollars of investment from a guy named Thomas Fulton, Yes, who became the secretary treasurer for the company. Yes. Now, unfortunately, and and this is a problem with a lot of factory jobs. In this time, Hawking was known to have rough working conditions and poor wages for its employees. They were underpaid, even high level

employees at that time comparatively. And additionally, this was kind of a fun fact, I guess kind of the founders were not fans of unions employees being able to band together and demand better working conditions. And yeah, so much so that when there was a glass workers strike in nineteen eleven, Fulton hired scabbers from the Glass Bottle Blowing Association or the g b b A to take up the work. So he was just like, I'm going to

hire scabbers because these unions are dumb. Now, I will say they did improve conditions in the nine thirties when we got the National Industrial Recovery Act and later the Wagner Act under f DR, and Hawking said, yeah, well follow all of these regulations. So things got better at that time. Once it became the law then suddenly they were totally on board. Uh, there was a there was a little bit of a setback in nineteen twenty four. Um. Yeah,

fire burned down the factory. Not surprising when you're dealing with molten glass. Yeah, as it turns out, First of all, things were a lot more flammable back then. Yeah, and we don't talk about it a lot. A lot of factories had fires at various points yea of history of this company. Yeah, So at that point that meant that the fifty people who would normally work in that factory had no factory to work in holiday. Yeah. But but

they actually were able to rebound from that. The company had made enough money so that they were able to reinvest that money and build out new factories, and they also had enough to go and acquire a couple of other glassmaking companies. But then we get the Great Depression, which, as we know, was hard for so many companies. It wasn't so great it as it turns out, it's a really terrible depression, but it wasn't that bad for Hawking Glass.

That's that's true because they were able to mostly just by coincidence they had happened to not by coincidence, but but good timing. They had just developed a an approach that would end up dramatically speeding up the process of glassblowing. And by speeding it up, they also meant that it was more efficient, thus therefore less costly. So ultimately, what that translates into is that they could sell glassware for less money than they had and still make a profit,

which is great because everybody had less money. Yes, so they could end up selling like two tumblers for a nickel, for example, and still make a profit off of that. Charlie, if I could have two tumblers for nickel, I would build a fort out of tumblers. I'll tumble for you different tumbler. Oh right, got it. So that managed to

allow them to afloat during the Great Depression. They were actually still able to sell to the average consumers out there because they were able to price their products at a very competitive level. Yeah. Yeah, And in Hawking Glass merged with a company called Anchor Cap and Closure Corporation and they became the Anchor Hawking Glass Corporation. Yeah, so Anchor Cap Enclosure, that name probably gives you a hint.

It was sort of a bottle cap. Yeah, yeah, so if you're ever a fallout fan, this is where they made the money, apparently, because it's all in bottle caps. Okay, that's enough of a tangent there. So then we get up to, uh, the fifties and sixties, and we're rushing through this because as dramatic as these stories are, where things like the Great Depression or a fire could have wiped them out, it's not the biggest brink moment. Yeah, we're not even close yet. So in the fifties and sixties,

Anchor Hawking Glass Corporation would expand. Uh, they also not just grew as a company. They started to diversify in the sort of stuff that they made, and they also made more acquisitions. They opened up more factories, They actually created R and D facilities. They acquired a mold too form glass. Yeah, not white mold on a bread. No not. They weren't into penicillin, no, no, I mean, I mean maybe if they got to cut or something. Um. And then by the end of the sixties they had expanded

so much that they became the Anchor Hawking Company. They removed glass from the name of their company because they felt that that was too limiting. Then made people think, oh, like the glass company, So they just took that out of their name because they were also doing other things yeah, like bottling, yeah, peanut butter jars, yeah, beer bottles, and enclosures and glass table where they were making millions of

dollars in sales and profits. Now, the thing is up until this point, Anchor Hawking was kind of getting a reputation for being conservative. They had never acquired any yet by this point, which is kind of impressive considering they've had some fires and stuff. They were they were able to be profitable enough early enough that they were able to pay off those initial investments without having it just

continue to loom over the head of the company. Yes, but it was decided that Anchor Hockey needed some new life breathed into it, so they got an outsider to be their CEO, John Gushman, and he was the one who took the glass out of the name. Around this time, they were at their peak. They had about five thousand employees in their headquarters alone, and they were Lancaster, Ohio's

largest employer at the time. And under Gushman, there was a bunch of turnover and managers and they acquired nine companies so things seem to be going okay, yeah, I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Well, we'll tell you the first We're gonna take a quick break now, Ariel, you did the classic cliffhanger before ache back there, and I'm going to be honest with you. I haven't read this next note, so I honestly don't know where things are going.

I want to hear. Okay. So, by the end of the seventies, Achor Hawking had expanded into plastics, lighting, cabinet tree, and stoneware. While so well outside of just glass yes, uh, they had also acquired thirty five million dollars in long term debt from the purchase of the Cabinet Tree Company, which also did window hardware. Gotcha, So by acquiring this company, they had to take out loans in order to make

that acquisition. For now they have this debt, which I don't understand why they're saying, oh, well, the company has never been in debt. We should take some debt on to get some companies like that'll help us grow. It seems counterintuitive, but they tried it. Around the same time, though they were facing downward turn in sales rises in costs, there were some price control issues, and then they had

a ten week union strike. Wow. Okay, so it's like everything that could go wrong pretty much went wrong all at once. Yes, so they knew that they had to start making some changes to bring those profits back up before they fell too far to salvage. Now, I'm guessing that part of that just meant they needed to kind of shed some of these these businesses they had been acquiring. Yes,

they did. In nineteen seventy eight, they started investing themselves of some of their previous acquisitions, although they were still making some like they bought the Shenango China Company in nineteen seventy nine. But they're acquired lighting company. Since we said they were into lighting that burnt down. I mean again, you know, stuff is flammable, although in the in the

in the late seventies less so than it wasn't the third. Yes, Yes, they sold their Stoneware acquisition, they sold some other stuff, and then they replaced Gushman, so the outside CEO was now truly back on the outside. Yeah. Well, he decided to take on some debt right at the decline of things, so I'm sure that didn't help his position in the company. They replaced him with a man named Jay Ray topper Jay Ray. You can call me Ja or you can

call me Ray. Well, by the early nineteen eighties, they were doing all right as far as their sales were concerned, but they were still losing money overall, and they were not profitable. So at that point they looked to see what else they can shed and how they can, you know, manage this business to return to profitability. And part of that was selling a glass container division for three million

dollars to Wesray Corporation. At least it was worth three million dollars, but wes Ray didn't pay three They only paid sixty eight million, and Acri Hockey didn't even get all that. Yeah yeah, so yikes uh. And part of this was because you were starting to see how plastic was becoming so cheap and so easy to produce and it could be turned out so fast that it was becoming a major old native to glass containers. So for a lot of stuff out there, there were companies who

were switching from glass to plastic. Not for everything obviously, you know, if you want to go out and get pickles, they tend to be in glass jars, not plastic ones. But for stuff like peanut butter, which had been you know, an old mainstay of the Anchor Hawking Company. Well that was going into plastic now. Yeah, So this company, this this offshoot glass container company got purchased by Vitro s A went bankrupt in and was bought by with Zada

Investment Partners. It still had Anchor Hawking in its name, and I think it's still around, but the notes kind of trailed off after that, right, and it and it didn't have any actual connection to the older Anchor Hawking Company at that point apart from that name. Yes, And now we get to our old we get to the beginning of the real break. Yeah, and we get to the entrance of our old old friend who we love

talking about, Carl icon High. Yes, the activist investor who has you used his enormous wealth to influence companies across multiple industries frequently to the point of essentially controlling what they did from that point, and he tried to do that here. He had gotten six percent of the Anchor Hawking Company, yeah, which was cash rich at that time from the sale of their their divisions. Yeah, and they

were undervalued because of the lack of sales. And he saw the chance to take advantage of them, he did what is called green mailing them. Oh, I interesting, I don't think I've ever heard the term green mailing. Well, I've read it at least once. Jonathan, Well, he uh, in return for these big investments, he was saying, you know what, I deserve a seat on your board of directors because I'm I'm a major investor in the company,

and the company wanted to not do that. Yeah, and he said, cool, you gotta buy my shares back at like a premium price. Yeah. So this is one of those cases where, uh, it's almost like a hostile takeover, right, where where investors come in and they take enough shares of a company to have you know, like if it's common stock, they can have voting control of the company. And if they do that with enough shares, then they can determine what the company does, no matter what the

board of directors wants it to do. Um. So in this case, you know, Icon didn't have that much uh shares, and he couldn't really influence enough other investors to do it, but he had enough for him to be a pain in the butt. Yes, So that didn't help because they did buy those shares back because they wanted to keep their independency from him. They had to lay off six hundred and fifty people after closing one of their major glassware plants in Lancaster. Yeah, so not a good sign. Yep.

Then in February of seven, uh, they had to Well, there was a long battle for control of of Anchor Hawking, right, Yes, what the New York Times calls a five month long takeover battle. That's it's crazy to think that this is over a company that is primarily known for making glasswear. Yeah, so it is. It's just ridiculous. But the person who was trying to take over Anchor Hawking was the Newell Company, right, who also had similar type products housewares and such, and

sold it similar locations as Anchor Hawking. And they bought the Anchor Hawking Company for three hundred and thirty eight point two million dollars in a leverage, hostile takeover. So exactly what we were talking about a second ago. They've got enough control of shares to say, all right, we agreed to this acquisition. Yes, they had started buying shares in Acre Hawking in preparation to take the company over

in the summer of eighty six. So it took, like you said, about half a year of just acquiring shares to get to the point where they could do this, And once they had enough stake in the company, they offered to buy the company at thirty four dollars to share, and the board of Anchor Hawking said, no, yeah, there's too many conditions attached to this, We're not comfortable with it. So they revised their offer in January seven, and Anchor

Hawking agreed. Gotcha. So at this point you had a couple of different options that were presented to the shareholders in an effort to make this attractive for them to say, yes, we were totally on board, which, by the way, the first of was the revised offer. They went over the CEO of Anchor Hawking's head board members to say, hey, we want to buy you, and the board agreed. Right.

So one of the options they had was that shareholders would receive sixteen dollars a share and a sixteen dollar principal amount of subordinated debentures, which are not the same thing. Is subordinated debentures? Yeah, which I kept wanting to type when I was writing these notes. Yeah, but so what is subordinated debt. Well, when you have a company and you have subordinated debt, that's essentially debt that you pay

off last. Right, like you have you have various loans and debt that you have to pay, you're obligated to pay that back. Subordinated debt is the lowest priority stuff, and so before you pay off your subordinated debt, you have to pay off everything else. So the sixteen dollars per share plus sixteen dollars for the subordinated debentures, that's essentially saying, once the company has paid off all its other debt, then the money that's left over will be at least some of it will be paid out in

the sixteen dollar debentures. So that was option one. So if you if you want to cash out, you gotta wait. Yes, yeah, you have to wait, and you have to hope that there's enough money in this deal to pay off all

the outstanding debt. Then option two was shareholders would receive one share of the holding company's convertible stock with an annual dividend of around two dollars a share and a liquidation price of thirty two dollars per share, and then that could be converted to common stock at a premium. So what does that mean. Well, dividends a payout. So if you have a stock that pays with dividends, then on a regular basis, you get a payout whatever that

payout is rated for that particular stock. This is determined by the company's board of directors, and in the United States at least, there's no one rule about how frequently these are paid out. Some companies pay out them out quarterly, so you'll get one fourth of the amount four times a year. Some do it semi annually, some do it annually. You know, it all depends on the company. Anyway, it means that every year you would get this two dollars and a little bit more paid out as a dividend.

Not very much per share, but if you have a lot of shares, it adds up and it's meant to be a way to uh encourage people to reinvest in the company, right to buy. They take their dividend and then they use that to buy more shares in the company. Me there are certain companies that became famous for their dividends and that was like the reason to own stock ge for a very long time. That was the type of company they were UM and then common stock is the type of stock where if you own common stock,

you have a vote on company matters. Right, A share represents like a vote, So if there are lots and lots and lots of shares out there, it doesn't amount too much. But if you own thousands of shares, then you have a lot of voting power. Um. That's in contrast to preferred stock, where it's a share in the company, but you don't have any voting rights. But they also

had a third option they did so what was option three? Well, if Anchor Hockey Company shareholders didn't like those options, they could choose to defer paying taxes as long as they held onto their shares in the new company. Yeah. So really what this was was telling shareholders, Hey, we want you guys to believe in this and too, you know, hold on of these shares. Uh. You know, obviously like and attracting shareholders is great because it means new investments

coming into the company. You don't have to raise as much money then because you have influx of of cash coming in. So this was all part of the plan to try and keep the company stable during this transition. Yes, and they renamed the company Anchor Hawking specialty glass classes back in the name glasses, back in the name Well, it's apropos uh. And the head of Newell, Daniel Ferguson,

became the head of Anchor Hawking, right. And then the first thing he starts to do is look at the profitability sheets, right for all the different facilities, Like he wasted no time. Yeah. Essentially it's like, hey, if you're not if you're not in the black, you're gone. Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna kick you to the curb. And then for the plants that we're doing well, he would look at reinvesting in the plants right to improve their operations,

which is good. And so he started looking at the different stuff that Anchor Hawking was making and decided to sort of organize the company around the types of products the different places were specializing in. Right, so you would have a specific division for one type of product versus another. Yeah, and then he fired a whole bunch of executives and employees at the hq UH within weeks of this merger's approval, and he moved the headquarters to Illinois and all of

the manufacturing to Lancaster. And this drop sales some for Anchor Hawking, So they were they were selling fewer products, yes, but the savings that they had made made up for that. Yeah. So this is one of those reasons that we see companies doing downsizing, right. It's one of those things about cutting costs. Sometimes it's absolutely necessary. There are times where

a company really does have too many employees. Right. More frequently we see companies that probably don't have too many employees, but they want to make that that quarterly goal. And an easy way of doing quote unquote easy way of doing it is to cut down on overhead. They have more expendable employees than they have expendable cash. Yeah, not to say that those employees that laid off are expendable. No, there were air quotes around those words. You couldn't see it. Yeah,

I tried to make them audible. But so what what happens now? Well, by Anchor hawkings various divisions, we're contributing over four hundred million dollars into Newell's two billion dollars of sales, with glass Worth specifically making up a hundred and fifty million of that. Okay, so Newell's doing like two billion dollars in business and four million of that is from Anchor Hawking. Yeah. So again things seem to be going pretty well. But you know what, we're not

done brinking yet. We aren't. We'll we'll tell you what happens next right after this break. Okay, So ninety four we were talking about how Anchor Hawking was making up about four billion dollars of the overall two billion dollars in sales that Newell was doing. Just a few years later, though, Newell was looking at the possibility of kind of shedding Anchor Hawking and getting rid of it entirely. Yes. In two thousand one, they were trying to sell Anchor Hawking

to a company called Libby Glass. I heard some reports that Anchor Hawking might have been underperforming, but mainly this was because Newell had made a really poorly thought out acquisition. Who did who did they buy? They bought rubber Maid, And they bought rubber Maid at a time when the brand was really struggling. Uh, it was kind of suffering from the Walmart effect. And not only did they buy it at a time when it was struggling, Uh, they very likely overpaid for it. Yes, and then so now

you've got this this bad investment. You've made paid too much for a bad investment. You've got a couple of options, right. One is that you you spin it off, you sell it off at a loss, and you eat the cost of that, which no one really wants to do. Another possibility is, well, if we really focus on this business, maybe we can turn it around. But if we want to really focus on it, we may have to get rid of some other stuff in our company in order

to devote the attention we need to. Yeah, I mean, part of the problem is that even the rubber Maid and Nah, we're both focusing on homewears to a degree, just the sizes of the different corporations didn't match up in the marketing strategy and all that. Uh, this this week called this merger. The merger from how it was kind of a little bit insane. I had to I tried to really condense what happened there. But yeah, it's

it merits a story all by itself. Yes, yes, but Newell tried to, as we said, sell off some divisions to keep rubber made. Uh. Newell stock values drop in two years following the acquisition, and rubber Maid stock drop annual had to write off five million dollars in losses as goodwill, So selling off Anchor Hawking wouldn't just be because they need to focus on rubber Mate, but literally because they needed to cover some of this. Yes, uh, they sold him off as a or they were trying

to sell him off as a debt finance buyout. The federal government, though, said no, Libby can't buy Anchor Hawking. It was too too close to the Libby's business, I assume, so it's sort of like an anti competitive thing possibly. So instead they were bought by a division of Cerberus Capital Management called Global Home Products, along with several other divisions of Newell. I just want to say that Cerberus

Capital Management sounds awfully ominous to me. It really does just the game with three headed dogs and stuff, you know. All right. So, so the thing though, was that Cerberus actually had a reputation for turning companies around. They did, they did. Sadly, though, this time they didn't do so well on that front because a few short years later, in two thousand six, Anchor Hawking and Global Home Products

filed for Chapter eleven protection. So the company known for swooping in and rescuing other companies suddenly needed at least this part of it needed rescuing itself. Yes, so Anchor Hawking isn't gone. They're not out of the game yet. They were sold to Monomoy Capital Partners, which is a much smaller investment company, for seventy five million dollars in

cash and twenty million in liabilities. And at this time, Anchor Hawking was making revenues around two million dollars and they were still a leading name in glassware right, but despite that, they were starting to have some pretty stiff competition, largely from glassware that was being imported from other countries that was much cheaper. Yeah. For a long time that wasn't an issue because glassware is fragile and so you

don't really want to ship it overseas. But times change. Uh. The goal that Monumoy had was to make Anchor Hawking a standalone and they did for a while until they acquired the Oneita Group in two thousand eleven. If you

don't know one Needa, they're mostly known for doing like silverware. Yeah, And in two thousand twelve they merged Anchor Hawking with the one need A Group to create Everywhere Global and then that same year they had four million dollars in losses, and then the following year or in everything got better, right, everything was much better. No, in two thousand thirteen they suffered seventeen million dollars in losses. Yes. I looked at the end of the year report for Everywhere Global. It

was not a happy report. No. They became a publicly traded company in two thousand thirteen after a bunch of financial and regulatory issues. Uh. But most of the company was still owned by Monomoy, so when everything went poorly, their debt quickly exceeded their credit limits. So then you get when the manufacturing plant would actually go through a temporary shutdown, right, Yes, after what was called a quote unquote dismal first quarter. I mean after a year where

you've lost almost twenty million dollars. I wonder what their definition of dismal is eight million dollars for one quarter. Yes, their goal in the shutdown was to to reduce inventory and improve liquidity and open up in a month or so. It's funny because you would think that just to improve liquidity in glassware, you just turned the temperature up, Jonathan, I'm sorry. Uh. They said the losses were due to a drop in sales. I'm just moving on now. You can tell I'm not the one who did these notes

because I'm the one making terrible jokes. No, please, please, it's it's an equal share on the terrible jokes Jonathan again. Everywhere said that the losses were due to a dropping sales to food service companies and also how utility costs. I also want to mention that everywhere in this case is every W A R E where, like every table where, because when we say everywhere, we mean the company everywhere, not that it's not every hair, not that it was

happening every Yes. Uh, their loss was so large that quarter, and I guess overall that they ended up going into breach of contract on a two and fifty million dollar credit agreement. Yeah, the stock for Everywhere dropped all the way down to since a share, which is not great.

When you dropped down below a dollar, you get delisted. Yes, they sought to fix the breach and make their creditors happy and negotiate an extension, but by April of two fifteen, the Everywhere group entered bankruptcy, the second bankruptcy for Anchor Hawking with they At the time, they said they had assets of somewhere between a hundred and fifty million dollars. That's a pretty wide range, yes, and like abilities of somewhere between five million and one million dollars. Okay, well

that's a bigger range. And their plan was for a prepackaged bankruptcy which would give their lenders control of the company once they exited in two to three months. Now, at this point, the CEO of Everywhere was a guy named Sam Solomon, and he said the company wasn't about making product, it was about making money. One. I'm pretty sure that the workers that the companies weren't super happy about that too. They weren't making enough money to cover

the costs, so they weren't doing such great business either way. Yeah. Well, regardless of the lenders decided to be nice and help with this bankruptcy. They restructured their debt and the Everywhere group left bankruptcy in June of that same year. So are we through with all the brink moments? Now? Um? There any other brink moments I need to worry about. You brought me on a glass roller coaster. I did

bring you on a last roller coaster. There are no more brick moments, but there there's still some movement in the company. Let's let's talk about what's happened post bankruptcy emergence. Well, first of all, they the company really started focusing on reducing their debts something and has actually very vigorously sought

this goal. In two thousand and sixteen, they brought in former Procter and Gamble executive Patrick Lockwood Taylor, and he thought that a lot of the losses that Anchor Hawking was experiencing, not just because of all these hostile takeovers and poor management decisions, was due to the brand losing its meaning through all of these changes, and so he really wanted to put new emphasis on quality products and making them affordable and really bringing back what Anchor Hawking

was known for. And I guess the one Needed group as well. He really wanted to play up community importance and all that. But you know, the factory workers, I mean, they're obviously not happy through all of this turmoil. Their wages are being cut, their benefits are being cut, people are getting laid off. In two thou fourteen when the shutdown happened, Therefore, one K Contributions got next and I don't know if they're back now, but they at least

weren't back for a good while. So this whole time, while people are trying to move paper around to keep the company going, the people who are actually responsible for making the products are suffering the most. Yes. Yes. And the factories of course are going into some amount of disrepair because there's all of this focus elsewhere. Again, like I said, I don't know if conditions have improved. I certainly hope so. Factory work is not. It's so needed, but it is not easy. No, it is not the

glamorous work. No. In two thousand seventeen, the company changed their name from Everywhere Global to the One Need a Group in an effort to emphasize our long standing leadership in the dining and food preparation industry. But they also started outsourcing their customer service to Emphasis in India, which of course cut more jobs and more costs. Got you, so bring us up to date. What's going on over

the last couple of years. Well, in two thousand eighteen, after they got a fifty million dollar capital investment in Fusion from one of their largest stockholders, Center Lane Partners, they brought back in Mark Ichorn, who we didn't really talk about, but he was Anchor Hawking CEO from ninety nine in that era of Newell's ownership before they tried to sell off again. And he was also everywhere as

president from two thousand four to two thousand twelve. So here's a guy who's been part of this company in two separate stints, coming back again, coming back again. So I wonder if he just kind of kept getting ousted whenever the acquisitions happened. And then it's entirely possible. We've seen that sort of stuff happened in other companies before, but yeah, I don't think I've ever seen it happened

twice in the same company. But yeah. In two thousand, Groups sold a large portion of their food service division to Crown Brands in an effort to focus more on selling their glassware and focus on Anchor Hawking, and they also opened a showroom at forty one Madisine in New York. Two helps strengthen I guess their growth that they're experiencing now and kind of to establish themselves in the minds of consumers again. I'll have to drop by there next

time I'm in New York. I go there fairly frequently now, so you know, there's it's kind of hard. Like we often like to sum up our episodes with lessons, this one's a little tricky just because, uh, there were so many things that happened within the entire history of this company, and so many times, like, there were so many different threats, some external, some internal, that this company experienced throughout its

entire history. I guess, you know, the first thing we can say is, if you're working in a highly flammable media, make your factories fireproof as best you can. But I mean, also, a lot of this was just hostile takeover, so you can try to fight it. But yeah, it's uh, I mean, a lot of this is from that culture of the eighties where the hostile takeover was like a a prime methodology for getting control of a company, and since those days,

the practice has largely fallen out of favor. It's not that it can never happen again, but there were a lot of high profile hostile takeovers that ended very poorly for lots of people. So it's not something you see nearly as frequently as you did in the eighties now. But you know, it's not surprising to have a bunch of bankruptcies when you have three corporate owners in fifteen years. Yeah. Yeah, and and again it's we should also mention this in

no way was a reflection on the quality of the products. Yeah. The the issue with the company was not their products or even failing to Yeah, they were, they were adapting to the market. They were, but it was often because whatever parent company had control of them at the time was dealing with issues not directly to Anchor Hawking and then having to leverage Anchor Hawking in order to deal

with those issues. Yeah. Now, I wonder if things would have turned out differently had they not fought Carl Icon on his original move to take over the company. It's hard to say. I mean, you know, there's it's impossible unless we were able to travel to some sort of parallel universe. And uh, I got other plans for this weekend too, But I want to end this episode with one fun fact. In the nineteen fifties, Anchor Hawking helped sponsor the late night show Broadway Open House on NBC.

So in a lot of the articles I read, they're actually credited with helping with the invention of late night television. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, one of these days we'll have to do like an episode about some of the earliest sponsors of things like radio and TV because those were companies that if it weren't for those companies, we never would have had radio and television programming. It was only because of their money that we were able to even get that stuff. But

that's a topic for a differ for an episode. We've got a lot of plans for some interesting ideas for upcoming episodes, but we also continue to get amazing suggestions from you guys and keep it up because if it weren't for that suggestion, I probably never would have learned anything about anchor hawking, and it was a fascinating story. Yeah,

I agree. If you have suggestions, you can email us at feedback at the Brink podcast dot show yep, and you can visit our website that's the Brink podcast dot Show. You're going to find an archive of all of our past episodes there. You also find information about us. Yeah. Also, if you like the show, tell your friends about it, give us a good review on iTunes or whatever catching

app you use. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Now, word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways to spread the love and get more more listeners, and the more listeners we get, the more suggestions we get, and frankly, the easier my job, so you know, from a selfish point of view, do it anyhow, Until next time, I'm Ariel Austin and I'm Jonathan Strickland. Business on the Brink is a production of I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works.

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