Few companies that are started ever live to see a profit made. Fewer still exist (in one form or another) one hundred years later. For those companies that do live to see maturity, none is without ethical and financial quandaries that must be tackled somewhere in their history. This paper is about one such company. In 1897, John Stewart and Thomas Clark founded The Chicago Flexible Shaft Company in Dundee, Illinois. Over the span of a century, the company had changed faces many times. It had acquired rival companies, added new product lines, changed it's name, declared bankruptcy, gone public, rebounded, restructured, relocated, and hired and fired many top executives, including one "Chainsaw Al-, which brings us up to the present. .
The Chicago Flexible Shaft Company, or Sunbeam, as it had come to be known, was by the end of the 20th century, a household name. Over its 100 years of existence, the company had changed and grown with society and its needs. Sunbeam had facilities in Canada, England, Hong Kong, Mexico, the US, and Venezuela. The company was well known for its product lines for the home including: Coleman, Eastpak, First Alert, Grillmaster, Health o Meter, Mixmaster, Mr. Coffee, Mrs. Tea by Mr. Coffee, Oster, Osterizer, Powermate, Borg, and Campingaz. The 1980's were difficult for the Sunbeam Corporation. In 1981, Allegheny International acquired Sunbeam, but in 1988, when Allegheny sales declined in other areas, they were forced to declare bankruptcy. Investors Michael Price, Michael Steinhardt, and Paul Kazarian purchased the Sunbeam division from creditors in 1990. They renamed the company The Sunbeam-Oster Company, and two years later, took the company public. Kazarian was forced out, and a year later, the company relocated to Florida. In 1995, the company name was changed back to Sunbeam Corporation. .
By June of 1996, sunbeam had over 12,000 SKUs, which are individual variations of product lines.
