Frank Mack, William A Mack, Mack Brothers, and the start of the Standard Sewing Machine Company
The Mack Brothers (Frank and Miles) were agents for Domestic sewing machines. They were
based in Akron from 1872-1875
and Cleveland from
1875-1879. In 1878, they also became agents for
New Home, which had just been introduced. They covered and enormous
territory with eight branch offices and in 1878 it was reported that they sold
12,000 machines a year. They had wooden cabinets manufactured for them in Cleveland and bought
the ironwork from the DSMCo.
In
1879, Frank and Miles sold Mack Brothers to the DSMCo. Mack Brothers/Domestic
wanted to continue as New Home agents along with Domestic, but New Home did not believe Domestic would properly
represent their product and assigned their territory to another agent. This caused some
acrimony.
After selling Mack Brothers, Frank Mack became the general manager and vice president of DSMCo for 5 years.
Although he continued to reside in Norwalk, W A Mack
traveled frequently to the factory in Newark.
In 1884, William and Frank
left Domestic to form the
Standard Sewing Machine Company. Frank was President of Standard from 1884 until 1893.
William became he technical genius behind the Standard rotary. He continued to patent improvements
to his designs for at least another 20 years.
The Standard SMCo grew quickly, doubling their factory and facilities the second year and increasing to three times the
original size the third year. By 1888, the factory employed 300 men and turned out over 150 machines daily. W. A. Mack was
quoted as saying that he made more Standards in the first year than he did Domestics in the first 9 years.
