Our manufacturers - today: Coleman




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After the war, people had money and were ready to have fun. The automobile was no longer a novelty. Prices made cars affordable for many families, and with mobility came the urge to travel and explore. The vacation business was booming and Coleman® took advantage of it. Motor camping became the rage. Travelers lashed their belongings to their running boards and took off. Roadways were improving, but they weren't dotted with accommodation. Holidaymaker made camp beside the road. The fold-up camp stove Coleman® developed in 1923 quickly found favor with the auto camping crowd. To retailers, the two-burner was billed as a "keen cooker and a quick seller." It found its way onto front porches and into hunting lodges, vacation cabins and camping trailers. Along with the lantern, which had suddenly found a new market, the camp stove made an ideal travelling companion. During the next decade, Coleman® would overtake its competitors and dominate the market.

W.C. Coleman® surrounded himself with talented people, including his son Sheldon who had a degree in mechanical engineering and firsthand production experience working in the company's Canadian plant. As markets evaporated due to widespread rural electrification, the younger Coleman® lobbied for further product diversification. The company began turning out the gas floor furnaces and oil space heaters that would enable it to survive the Depression. Its manufacturing capabilities were now considerable. Coleman® was said to have the largest number of working metal lathes west of the Mississippi. And they would soon see heavy action.

Coleman®' s biggest customer became the U.S. military. During WWII, its Wichita plants cranked out projectiles for the Navy and parts for B-17 and B-29 bombers. But their most valuable contribution to the war effort was the development of the GI Pocket Stove. The specifications seemed impossible. The stove had to be lightweight, no larger than a quart thermos, burn any kind of fuel, and operate in weather from -60º to 125º F. Fewer than 60 days after work commenced, Coleman® demonstrated a working prototype. And in November 1942, 5,000 of Coleman®' s little stoves went into battle when U.S. forces invaded North Africa. Credit for ramping up production so they shipped out with the troops goes to another Coleman® son, Clarence. The stoves burned for two hours on a cup of fuel from a jeep or plane. They were carried across every battlefield in Europe and the Pacific. They showed up in tents, foxholes and bombers. An article in the Los Angeles Times stated, "Many a huddle of soldiers got the warmth to survive and fight another day from a Coleman® Stove." In all, over a million were produced.


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