Global Fastener News

FASTENER HISTORY

July 21, 1982 FIN – Two of the three-man family team that built Newark’s Fastener City have bought Continental Fasteners Inc., manufacturer and importer of nylon insert locknuts.

Bob Greendorfer, brother of Sid Greendorfer, and Leonard Robinowitz – Sid’s son-in-law – have bought the ailing company and hope to get it on track again.
Where’s Sid? He is restricted from the fastener business by his sale of the Fastener City group to HMW Industries, Inc. He is heading up a Newark, N.J. tool manufacturer named Tapex Tool.

Headquarters of Continental will be in Harrison, N.J., where the new principals are associated with Harrison Screw & Nut and its Aerospace Fasteners Division.

The Niles facility will be managed by Bob Jarman, and the Harrison facility will be run by Greendorfer. Both, says Robinowitz, will offer “rock-bottom prices and immediate shipment.”

Continental supplies Tork Lok Nuts, identified by purple nylon inserts. It is, says Robinowitz, one of the four leading companies in the field: Aero Stop Nut, a part of Fastener City; Esna Division of Amerace Corp., Greer-Smyrna Div. Of Microdot, are the others.

Sid Greendorfer started Aero Stop Nut in 1947 to act as the U.S. distributor for a self-locking nut just developed by the British fastener maker, Firth Cleveland. Greendorfer had already started Industrial Bolt & Nut Co., a master distributor on the east coast to jobbers and distributors; Cap Screw & Nuts Co., an importer; and Handi-Man, a packager of bubble-pack fasteners for do-it-yourselfers.

The Firth Cleveland stop nut had a fiber insert. In 1964, Elastic Stop Nut Corp. of America (later to become Esna) licensed Firth Cleveland to make its patented nylon insert nuts. For the three years that Esna’s patents remained in effect, Aero continued to import the English stop nuts and was, with the other U.S. company, one of the two companies marketing the product in the U.S. When the patents expired, Japanese prices for the nylon insert nuts were lower than the British prices and Aero switched gradually to the Fat East for its supply.

Aero now has four warehouses – in Newark, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston (In Chicago, it is primarily Aero; in Los Angeles, it is together with Handi-Man and Howard Hardware; in Houston it is Aero and Cap Screw and in the Newark headquarters of Fastener City, it is all of the companies). Jerry Badner, vice president of Aero, tells FIN that it now has one of the largest inventories of the stop nuts in the world.

Since 1976, The Fastener City group has been owned by HMW Industries, Inc., a descendent of the old Hamilton Watch Co. What do you think of when you think of the old Hamilton pocket watches? Trains; and HMW is part of a much bigger conglomerate, Katy Industries, which is a descendent of the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, better know as Katy. Katy is now considering divesting itself of HMW in a trade of assets for stock, which would leave HMW on its own.

Robinowitz headed up Handi-man. Bob Greendorfer headed up Cap Screw & Nut.

The Fastener City group, by the way, has been a favorite of membership chairmen, having joined: National Fastener Distributors Assn., Southwestern Fastener Assn., The Fastener Assn., Los Angeles Fastener Assn., Metropolitan Fastener Distributors Assn.; Chicago Nut & Bolt Assn.; New England Fastener Distributors Assn.; and the Hardware Square Club. Jerry Badner, appropriately, is chairman of the membership committee for Metropolitan. ©1982/2010 Fastener Industry News