A History of High Standard Companies by John Stimson High Standard in Connecticut was actually four different companies located in New Haven, East Haven, Hamden and East Hartford. The original company was originally a partnership between Carl Gustav Swebilius and Gustav A. Beck in 1926. Both men were former employees of Marlin. The product was deep hole drill bits used in the steam boiler, automotive, and firearms business This drill bits are often generically called “gun drills”. In 1927, the partnership was incorporated as the High Standard Manufacturing Company Incorporated. The president of the new company was Beck’s son. Beck’s son soon left the company and by the mid 1930s both Becks were gone but the senior Beck maintained a connection as he held the mortgage on the factory building. High Standard shipped its first pistols, a semi-auto pistol and a single shot pistol beginning in October 1932. In 1940 High Standard entered the Shotgun market. The company received an order from the British Purchasing Group for .50 Cal M-2 machine guns. An old four-story factory was rented, and a new factory was constructed in Hamden and another building in Hamden was purchased. On April 1, 1941, a new company, High Standard Manufacturing Corporation Incorporated, was founded. This new company was basically what the original company had been making shotguns, pistols and deep hole drills with the pistol factory in New Haven and the headquarters in Hamden. The new company had government contracts for pistols, .45 caliber 1911 barrels and .30 caliber rifle and machine gun barrels. In the meantime, High Standard Manufacturing Company was purchased by the U. S. Government and High Standard Manufacturing Company Incorporated became the management and operation personnel for the government facility. A third company, the Dixwell Corporation, was created to manage the other two companies. Each of the other companies paid the Dixwell Corporation a percentage of gross sales. They had no product, only consulting services. The major participants in management of the other two companies were managers who worked for the Dixwell Corporation. With the end of the war, the original company, the High Standard Manufacturing Company Incorporated, had no customers and did not own the factory or any machinery. After settling the taxes and excess profits paperwork it closed probably in 1946. I haven’t found anything about the closing of the Dixwell Corporation, but I suspect that it closed a little after the closing of the original company. Post War, the High Standard Manufacturing Corp was making deep hole drill bits, pistols, and shotguns, Sears had been a customer of the shotguns since 1940. Then Sears and High Standard reached agreement on Sears funding the design, development, tooling, and testing of the 12-gauge pump shotguns and .22 rimfire rifles. Later Sears was the impetus for the Dura-Matic, Model 80 pistols and the Sentinel/model 88 and Double Nine/Ranger revolvers. The Sears business continued to grow dramatically until sales to Sears represented around 65% of the total sales. Then in the early 1960s, Sears started dropping High Standard produced guns. The pistol and revolver sales ended in late 1963. Other products which had been trade named J. C. Higgins were now transitioning to the new sporting goods trade name “Ted Williams”. Some survived for a while being marked simply Sears and some briefly used the Ted Williams name but gradually the .22 rifle and shotguns were mostly replaced by new models manufactured by Winchester. By 1967 the High Standard guns offered were a Model 34 rifle and the Model 75 shotgun. All of the other models had been discontinued. Before the 1968 National Firearms Act was enacted in October 1968, Sears had abandoned High Standard. Although Sears stopped selling by mail order, they continued for almost 15 years with gun sales in the stores. Beginning around 1969 Sears resumed buying a single model 21 pump shotgun in .410 bore. With the decline of sales to Sears, High Standard back filled that loss in sales with new large customers. Kroydon, J. C. Penny, Western Auto, W. Hogee, and Gamble Skogmo were a few of the earliest. In all there were over 20 new major customers who were buying mostly shotguns. 1968 was the beginning of a change in High Standards operations. The Leisure Group, a conglomerate from Los Angeles, purchased High Standard from the Stockholders. Sears had been a preferred stock shareholder. This provided a clean exit for Sears and for the Swebilius family. The Swebilius family had been helping finance High Standard Manufacturing Corporation operations since the end of WWII. As a wholly owned subsidiary, High Standard had to adapt to the new ownership. The Leisure Group fired a large number of the office employees thus losing many years of experience in the business. Bill Donovan and Bill Henry, both of the sales department left of their own accord which decimated High Standard’s sales and marketing department. In an interview with Steve Hinchcliffe, President of the Leisure Group, he attributed the slide of High Standard to the 1968 National Firearms Act which was enacted just after he bought High Standard Manufacturing Corporation. I would speculate that making the Government the whipping boy was more convenient than acknowledging that in the due diligence process before the purchase they didn’t see that the biggest customer Sears had for all practical purposes stopped doing business with High Standard. The Leisure Group took a lot of money out of High Standard at the expense of investing in newer machinery and maintenance of their old machinery. They also replaced more experienced, more expensive, employees with cheaper new hires with less experience. These employees were mostly office personnel. The shop personnel were union, and their pay was not particularly high, so there was little opportunity to save money by replacing the shop personnel. The Deep hole drill bit business was sold by The Leisure Group because it was not a Leisure product. This original product had been a reliable profit center since the beginning. During WWII it had more profits than the .22 training pistols in percent margin and in total product dollars. About 1972, the Leisure Group replaced High Standard’s president who had left the company with Don Mitchell, a former vice-president of sales at Colt. Mitchell wanted to increase sales, but money was very tight and there was none for design and development of new models. In an effort to increase sales Mitchell instituted deals to sell private labeled guns manufactured by others. This led to Nikko shotguns, Dan Wesson revolvers, Uberti black powder revolvers, and Auto-Mag pistols wearing the High Standard label. It appears that the deal with Numrich for the Hopkins Allen black powder guns slightly preceded Mitchell. Mitchell without warning jumped ship and went to Ithaca as its new president in 1975. In 1976, the new president Clem Confessori in determined that downsizing and leaving Hamden would be the strategy for survival. It would get them out from under an old factory building that was larger than they needed, and which required a lot of maintenance and was costly to heat. Production in Hamden ended in February 1977 and resumed in East Hartford in June/July 1977 in an industrial strip mall. The new factory was much smaller, so manufacturing did need to outsource some operations. This did not necessarily compromise quality. Even during its best days High Standard had outsourced parts and operations. Receiving inspection should have caught any sub-standard parts before incorporating them into the products. The product lineup was greatly decreased as the rifles and shotguns were no longer produced. The standard slant grip pistols were also dropped. The steel frame Western style revolvers were temporarily deleted from production from February 1977 through August of 1978. The steel frame Sentinel family was also deleted from the lineup except for a couple of new models that were not cataloged and which did not last. The company now had even less sales to cover overhead. The Leisure Group wanted to sell the High Standard Manufacturing Corporation as they had pretty well run the company into the ground. Continuing the company would be costly. In early 1978, the then president Clem Confessori and some other investors purchased certain assets of the High Standard Manufacturing Corporation from the Leisure Group but not the company The new company was High Standard, Inc. In August 1978 High Standard Inc. resumed production of four models of the steel frame Western revolvers. They resumed production of two models of the Sentinel family from May through September 1978. Then the Sentinel family was again deleted from the lineup until October 1981. The new High Standard was heavily financed and since it was in questionable condition the loan rate was 6.5% over prime. During Jimmy Carter’s administration prime reached 21.5% which meant they were paying 28% interest. That is most likely too much cost for any struggling company to survive. The company did not go bankrupt but was dissolved by orderly liquidation and everyone but the stockholders got out whole. In the early 1980s there was a downturn in the firearms market. Which also contributed to the company's demise. In my opinion, if High Standard Inc. had tried to go forward, they would have gone bankrupt, and it would have been worse for everyone In summary, the original company, the one you asked about the High Standard Manufacturing Company Inc and its associated Dixwell Corp. probably closed in 1946 and had made its owners a big pot of money. The Company spun off on April 1,1941, the High Standard Manufacturing Corporation, Inc. was later bought in 1968 and more or less run into the ground by its new owner the Leisure Group. The old stockholders which were for all practical purposes Sears and the Swebilius family made out pretty well but the Leisure Group not nearly as well. The last company High Standard, Inc closed with only the stockholders losing money. I might also add that most interest in the company today is primarily the pistols which after WWII was a relatively small part of sales. Without the sales of the other products, it is likely that the companies would not have lasted as long as they did. This is especially true of the Sears sales. ----------------------------------------------------------- There were several plants over the years in several cities. 169 East Street, New Haven was the initial location in 1926 61-63 Foote Street, New Haven was the next in 1935 1811-1817 Dixwell Ave., Hamden Acquired in anticipation of British machine gun order. 1940 1337 Dixwell Ave., Hamden Ground broken Oct 1940 for new machine gun plant 100 Waterfront St., New Haven 1940 Building rented for machine gun production Dodge Ave., East Haven Used as the pistol plant beginning in the late 1940s and as a warehouse up until early to mid 1960s. 31 Prestige Circle, East Hartford. High Standard was lazy, cheap or indifferent to keeping the roll marking in sync with reality. The company name and the company address was not always up to date. In the late 1940s the Factory on Dodge Avenue, East Haven was the pistol plant, yet no pistols were marked East Haven. During that time the corporate headquarters were in the Dixwell avenue plant in Hamden, yet the pistols were still marked New Haven. ARTICLE BY JOHN STIMSON FROM RIMFIRE CENTRAL USED BY AUTHOR’S PERMISSION