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Concept
Clauss Cutlery Company
Summary
Clauss Cutlery is a cutlery brand owned by the Acme United Corporation since 2004. It was founded as Elyria Shear Works in 1877 by John and Henrie Clauss in Elyria, Ohio. At one time the company was the largest manufacturer of scissors and shears in the world.
The two brothers John and Henrie Clauss, of German origin, started Elyria Shear Works from a one-room building in Elyria, Ohio. Together with five employees, they began manufacturing scissors, shears, straight razors and serrated kitchen knives.
In the early 1880s, with his shear business prospering, John Clauss planned a major expansion. In August 1887, he moved the company to Fremont, Ohio, to be near an accessible, abundant supply of natural gas which had recently been discovered. The gas was ideally suited to fuel the furnaces for the company's forges and foundry. Clauss erected a two-stories-high plant at the corner of North Buchanan Street and Pine Street. Within one year, the company was producing 3,000 pairs of shears and scissors a day.
On January 17, 1889, disaster struck as the plant was completely destroyed by fire, causing 125 employees to lose their jobs. However, in less than four months, Clauss built a new plant and was back in full operation. The new four-story brick building at the corner of State Street and Sandusky Avenue was the largest shear factory in the world at that moment. Clauss also used this opportunity to change the company's name to Clauss Shear Company.
In 1919, Clauss Shear merged with Henkel Company, also from Fremont, to create Henkel–Clauss Company. Henkel Company was founded in 1906 to manufacture s, knives, shears and razors. The Henkel–Clauss merger created a company with over 1,000 employees and had the largest payroll in the United States at that time. John Clauss didn't live long to enjoy that success as he died later that year.
In the early 1920s the cutlery business faced a serious setback as Germany was permitted to export shears and scissors duty-free to the United States. The idea behind this was to help Germany pay back its World War I debts.
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