Company History:

Proud of Our Past. Focused on Our Future.

The Stanley Works is positioned to meet tomorrow's competitive challenges and continue as a leading worldwide manufacturer and marketer. Our businesses are diversified in terms of products, geographic spread and channels of distribution. We have moved effectively to expand our products into new market areas such as the Far East and Eastern Europe. Today, the Stanley name is known around the world as a reliable guarantee of quality and value.


In 1843, an enterprising businessman named Frederick Trent Stanley established a little shop in New Britain, Connecticut to manufacture door bolts and other hardware from wrought iron. Stanley's Bolt Manufactory was only one of dozens of small foundries and other backyard industries in town struggling to make a go of it by turning out metal products. But Stanley possessed a special innovative spirit and an uncommon passion for doing things right and his modest enterprise prospered and grew as The Stanley Works.

Today, 163 years after the company's founding, The Stanley Works is a worldwide manufacturer and marketer of tools, hardware and specialty hardware products for home improvement, consumer, industrial and professional use. The company stills bears not only Frederick Stanley's name but also the spirit and passion that drove him to succeed where others failed. The essence of that drive was summed up in 1877 by a widely read trade publication, Asher & Adam's Pictorial Album of American Industry:

"The secret of this company's success is an open one -- all who will may avail themselves of it, and all who do so will succeed -- one word tells it all and that one word is -- Excellence."