Quality Shop Equipment
Briggs & Stratton files Chapter 11
Briggs & Stratton Files Chapter 11:
For over 110 years, Briggs & Stratton has been a formidable competitor in industrial equipment here in the United States. Named after the original founders, this American icon has been an innovative producer of quality equipment dating back to the invention of the first aluminum small engine in 1953. Within the last 2 decades, Briggs & Stratton began acquiring other well known brands like Simplicity, Generac, Billy Goat Industries, and more. These moves were to create a more diversified company with cross connected items to their main focus of producing small engines. As a kid, just about every small engine I ever worked on was a Briggs & Stratton.
Unfortunately, sometimes accelerated growth through acquisition has many blind obstacles which are difficult to overcome. Many of us in the manufacturing world call some of this internal knowledge, tribal knowledge. Many times, those facility purchases or administering the company at the top fail to recognize how important tribal knowledge is until it’s too late. My guess is that’s what happened with Briggs & Stratton. In the words of my grandmother, “be careful to not bite off more than you can chew”. While I agree it makes sense to build or acquire companies which share common industries or manufacturing; it takes quite a bit of work to mesh them together and ensure you don’t loose unique competitive advantages of the individual business.
At ShopToolsOutlet we have been careful to sell equipment we have a solid basic understanding of. We have 3 sister companies all under the same ownership and each provides significant history and understanding to the products we sell. HMC Industries manufactures lift tables and fuel caddies. Liberty Real Estate operates warehousing and 3pl shipping services. Hollingsworth Mfg is over 100 years old produces high quality manufactured items for the United States Defense Department and industry around the world. An interesting simple item Hollingsworth produces which we sell is the HMC-308 Bench Block. If you’ve ever served in the military and had to service your weapon, there’s a good chance you have a Hollingsworth Bench Block in your tool kit.In any event,
I’m sure many factors played into the demise of Briggs & Stratton. Hopefully the new investment from KPS Capital Partners can provide the capital and leadership to bring the company out of Chapter 11 better and stronger in the future. America needs strong manufacturing and Briggs certainly fulfilled that role for many many years. We wish the company good luck as they enter the next phase of their company history.