Cutco Cutlery Keeps Manufacturing In U.S.

March 17, 2006

Jim Stitt, CEO, sees the U.S. as having quality and flexibility advantages.

A once-thriving cutlery industry, whose roots go back to English craftsmen who came to America in the 1700s, has pretty much disappeared from the landscape. But Cutco Corp., a $184 million company founded in 1949 in the small town of Olean, N.Y., survives and thrives making knives because of management's commitment to manufacture in the United States. Jim Stitt is the president and CEO of ALCAS Corp., Cutco's parent firm.

IW: Why does Cutco manufacture in the U.S.?

Stitt: We purchased this company from the Aluminum Co. of America in 1982 and made the decision to continue the course of where we had been. The company was founded on the [principle] of making a very high-quality household cutlery product that was sold in the home . . . and the best strategy [for us] was to continue the course of high quality and not try to get down and compete on price. We have really said quality is most important . . . and we feel we can best do that right here where we have been manufacturing from the very first day in Olean, N.Y., about 70 miles due south of Buffalo. We have the ability to maintain and control our manufacturing process [because it's] close at hand. I can walk out of my office and be on the factory floor in five minutes. We can very easily flex ourselves up and flex ourselves down because we're made right here, and we're delivered right from here. We have the ability to get a good workforce, an energetic workforce that wants to work here in Olean in the U.S.A. We have a principled, strong commitment to being U.S. made. We think it does add value.

IW: Did the 2000-2001 recession and its aftermath result in reviewing your commitment to manufacture in the U.S.?

Jim Stitt, president and CEO, ALCAS Corp.

Stitt: We're not burying our heads in the sand. You have to look at what makes sense, and clearly knives -- things with cutting edges -- are what we do best. There could be some things in our lines down the road [about which] we could say that [producing in the U.S.] doesn't really make sense. But for our knives, we have the equipment here. We have the people who are knowledgeable here. Certainly we could increase our margins by buying some things offshore. But we think we would give something on the quality. We know we would give something on the ability to service [the product] the way we do. We still come back to the point of saying this is the right decision. We sell in the customer's home. We sell on cash. And you got to deliver. And to say, "We miscalculated, and we'll have a boatload in here in about two months" doesn't cut it.

IW: What else can you say about your workforce?

Stitt: We have 25 people who work full time in our service center. With 14 million customers or more, there are a lot of knives out there. At the end of 2005, we had in the factory 335 hourly production employees -- and they are unionized; we have the United Steelworkers. Total employment, including our management and with Vector Marketing Corp., which is our sales and marketing arm and has its administration here, is over 650 here in Olean. We are constantly working with our people here on how we do it better, how we do it smarter and other things we have to continue to do to maintain the quality and support our sales team that is going into people's homes and selling the highest quality cutlery in the world.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.