All-Steel Equipment Company

Last updated
Allsteel
TypePublic company
Founded1912
Headquarters Aurora, Illinois USA
Key people
John Knell, President Charles Lembcke, General Manager
Products Office furniture, chairs, filing cabinets, workstations, tables, desks
Website www.allsteeloffice.com   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Allsteel was founded in 1912 as Allsteelequip Company and started out manufacturing custom metal objects, especially electrical equipment. The name was changed in 1929 to All-Steel-Equip Company. In the 1920s, the company began to branch out and started producing kitchen cabinets and refrigerated food lockers. Requests for metal file cabinets were becoming common, so the company bought out a supplier, the Aurora Metal Cabinet Company, in 1936 to enter this market.

History

After World War II, All-Steel-Equip began manufacturing desks, starting in 1947. It introduced bookcases, telephone stands and credenzas soon afterward. Also in 1947, the company's Los Angeles showroom appeared in Miracle on 34th Street . To complete its line of office furniture, All-Steel-Equip bought the Shepherd Chair Company of Melrose Park, Illinois and redesigned their products. All-Steel's line of office furniture was wildly successful and by 1966 it was the third-largest producer of steel office furniture worldwide. [1] Its products are known for durability, and many are still in use while others have been restored by antique furniture dealers.

The company was acquired in 1966 by C.I.T. Financial, a holding group, and was merged with B.K. Johl, a Canadian manufacturer of office furniture. All-Steel-Equip pioneered the lateral file in 1967, [2] with production beginning in 1969, and it became a huge commercial success. The company restructured after the merger with B.K. Johl, and in 1973 renamed its furniture divisions All-Steel Inc. and All-Steel Canada Ltd., both of which reduced to Allsteel in 1986. Allsteel was bought and sold by a number of different holding companies and finally merged into HNI Corporation in 1998. Its archives are held by Past Present Future (a furniture restoration store) in Minneapolis.

A file cabinet by All-Steel Equipment ASE file cabinet.JPG
A file cabinet by All-Steel Equipment

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gulf and Western Industries</span> American conglomerate (1934-1989)

Gulf and Western Industries, Inc. was an American conglomerate. The company originally focused on manufacturing and resource extraction, but it began purchasing a number of entertainment companies beginning in 1966 and continuing through the 1970s. Most notable among the acquisitions were film studio Paramount Pictures in 1966, television studio Desilu Productions in 1967, arcade and later videogame manufacturer Sega in 1969, book publisher Simon & Schuster in 1975, and a number of music labels including Dot Records. Some of these properties were reorganized under the Paramount brand, with Dot Records becoming the nuclei of Paramount Records and Desilu becoming Paramount Television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yamaha Corporation</span> Japanese music and audio equipment maker

Yamaha Corporation is a Japanese musical instrument and audio equipment manufacturer.

The Borroughs Corporation is an American manufacturer of shelving and office fixtures. The corporate headquarters is in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) was a large American conglomerate which existed from 1961 to 2000. At its peak, it was involved in aerospace, airlines, electronics, steel manufacturing, sporting goods, meat packing, car rentals, and pharmaceuticals, among other businesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North American Van Lines</span> Trucking company

North American Van Lines, or NAVL, is a large American trucking company originally formed in Cleveland, Ohio and later based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which specializes in home and office relocations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Filing cabinet</span> Piece of office furniture

A filing cabinet is a piece of office furniture for storing paper documents in file folders. In the most simple context, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored. The two most common forms of filing cabinets are vertical files and lateral files. A vertical file cabinet has drawers that extend from the short side of the cabinet. A lateral file cabinet has drawers that extend from the long side of the cabinet. These are also called side filers in Great Britain. There are also shelf files which go on shelves. In the United States, file cabinets are usually built to accommodate 8.5 × 11 paper, and in other countries, filing cabinets are often designed to hold other sizes of paper, such as A4 paper.

Celestion is a British designer and exporter of professional loudspeakers.

SteelcaseInc. is an international manufacturer of furniture, casegoods, seating, and storage and partitioning systems for offices, hospitals, classrooms, and residential interiors. It is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armstrong World Industries</span> American industrial manufacturer

Armstrong World Industries, Inc. is a Pennsylvania corporation incorporated in 1891. It is an international designer and manufacturer of wall and ceiling building materials. Based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, AWI has a global manufacturing network of 26 facilities, including nine plants dedicated to its WAVE joint venture. In 2011, Armstrong's net sales were $2.86 billion, with operating income of $239.2 million.

The Al Muhaidib Group is an international private group of companies based in Saudi Arabia that was founded in 1946 by Abdul Kadir bin Abdul Muhsin Al-Muhaidib. The current chairman of the board of directors is Sulaiman A. K. Al-Muhaidib.

Furniture manufacturing grew in Gettysburg, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. After expanding in the early 1900s it remained a strong part of the state's economy until the mid 1900s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chemtura</span> Former global corporation headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Chemtura Corporation was a global corporation headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with its other principal executive office in Middlebury, Connecticut. Merged into Lanxess in 2017, the company focused on specialty chemicals for various industrial sectors, and these were transportation, energy, and electronics. Chemtura operated manufacturing plants in 11 countries. Its primary markets were industrial manufacturing customers. The corporation employed approximately 2500 people for research, manufacturing, logistics, sales and administration. Operations were located in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. In addition, the company had significant joint ventures primarily in the United States. For the year ended December 31, 2015, the company's global core segment revenue was $1.61 billion. Chief executive officer was Craig A. Rogerson, who was also the president and chairman of the board of Chemtura Corporation. On April 21, 2017, Chemtura was acquired by the German chemical company Lanxess.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ashley Furniture Industries</span> American retailer

Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc. is an American home furnishings manufacturer and retailer, headquartered in Arcadia, Wisconsin. The company is owned by father and son team Ron and Todd Wanek. Ashley Furniture manufactures and distributes home furniture products throughout the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hoosier cabinet</span> Type of cupboard serving as a workstation

A Hoosier cabinet is a type of cupboard or free-standing kitchen cabinet that also serves as a workstation. It was popular in the first few decades of the 20th century in the United States, since most houses did not have built-in kitchen cabinetry. The Hoosier Manufacturing Co. of New Castle, Indiana, was one of the earliest and largest manufacturers of this product, causing the term "Hoosier cabinet" to become a generic term for that type of furniture. By 1920, the Hoosier Manufacturing Company had sold two million cabinets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The HON Company</span> American business furniture manufacturer

The HON Company designs and manufactures office furniture including chairs, cubicals, tables, desks and education furniture. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it has manufacturing facilities located throughout the United States and China, and sells its products through a nationwide network of dealers and retailers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parker Manufacturing Company</span>

Parker Manufacturing Company was a machine shop during World War II that manufactured tools. It is also a manufacturer/distributor of metal kitchen cabinets and sinks, and an industrial landlord in Santa Monica, CA. The company designed and manufactured a unique sheet-metal shear and was able to provide expedient delivery in only 30 days -- a huge advantage over other manufacturers who were taking around two years to make deliveries due to wartime production backlogs. It also designed and manufactured a unique sheet-metal press. Regarded as the most versatile press ever built, the Multi-Max press performed multiple operations in a compact amount of production-line space which was unprecedented.

Verson Allsteel Press Co. was a manufacturer of machine tools in Chicago, Illinois. It built sheet-metal presses of all sizes, including some weighing thousands of tons and as tall as a three-story building. Major customers for such presses are automobile and appliance manufacturers. In the 1980s, Allied Products Corp., a large conglomerate, purchased Verson, along with other manufacturing firms. In January 2001, Allied Products sold the majority of its Verson assets to Enprotech Corp. for $21.5 million less certain adjustments. Enprotech Corp., which is owned by the Japanese firm, Itochu International, continues to produce large presses under the brand name Verson-LCM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rába (company)</span> Automotive manufacturer

The RÁBA Automotive Group, commonly known as Rába, is a Hungarian public limited company, listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange. Rába engineers, manufactures and customizes automotive components, specialty vehicles and axles for commercial vehicles, agri-machinery and earth-movers. The Rába has been building axles as well as complete vehicles since 1902. The company has three strategic business units. The company is headquartered in Győr, employing more than 2000 people.

{{Infobox company

| company_name = Paoli, LLC 
<span class="mw-page-title-main">CNH Industrial</span> Italian-American multinational corporation

CNH Industrial N.V. is an Italian-American multinational corporation with global headquarters in Basildon, United Kingdom, but controlled and mostly owned by the multinational investment company Exor, which in turn is controlled by the Agnelli family. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and on Borsa Italiana: it is a constituent of the FTSE MIB index. The company is incorporated in the Netherlands. The seat of the company is in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with a principal office in London, England.

References

  1. "Past Present Future | Archives".
  2. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-10-25. Retrieved 2010-05-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)