CENTENNIAL Flashback
The 1970s
T
o mark this year’s 100th anniversary of The Merchant Magazine, we are looking back each month, decade by decade, at the advertisers that have long supported us and are still growing strong to this day. This month we check in on the groovy ’70s.
• Disston, the pioneering handsaw manufacturer, was acquired in 1955 by H.K. Porter Co., Pittsburgh, Pa. Porter began expanding the brand to a range of tools, such as tape measures, in August 1971. Disston lives on as a maker of custom steel blades, while H.K. Porter combined with Crescent Tools as Apex Tool Group’s industrial cutting products.
• Swaner Hardwood, four years after its founding, announced its move to a spacious new yard in Burbank, Ca., in a series of ads in The Merchant Magazine in May of 1971. The hardwood manufacturer/distributor continues at this same facility to this day. • Sierra Pacific Industries traces its beginnings to 1949 with Curly and son “Red” Emmerson’s first leased sawmill in Humboldt County. The current corporation was established in 1969 and by August 1971, when it first advertised in The Merchant, SPI had grown to nine Northern California mills. It now manages 2.3 million acres of timberland and operates a dozen sawmills, plus millwork, door/window, reman plants, and more. • Kelleher Corp. was founded in 1970 by Don Kelleher, working out of a quonset hut. He introduced a formal distribution center to Merchant readers in August 1971, and has since become
one of the largest distributors of wood moulding products and accessories in the western U.S.
Building-Products.com
• National Gypsum was incorporated in 1925 to develop a lighter, stronger wallboard made from a mixture of newsprint, gypsum and starch. At the heart of its first marketing campaign was its “Gold Bond,” offering $5,000 to anyone who could identify a lighter, stronger gypsum wallboard on the market. First running in The Merchant in December 1972, National Gypsum has remained a force as the nation’s second largest producer of wallboard.
• Elof Hansson was established in 1897 as an international trading house, with a timber division that began marketing through The Merchant in March 1973. • Louisiana-Pacific was spun off from GeorgiaPacific in 1973 under largerthan-life president Harry Merlo, who was caricatured in July 1973 on the cover of The Merchant Magazine. From its initial holdings of timberlands and lumber and plywood mills, LP helped pioneer OSB and a range of other building products. June 2022 n The Merchant Magazine n
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