Starrett has been sold.

[michael langman]

The title says it all at this point.

[mike stenson]

https://www.starrett.com/news-events/the-l.s.-starrett-company-enters-into-a-merger-agreement-with-middleground-capital-to-become-private-company


MiddleGround Capital is a private equity firm. It'll be dismantled.

[Jim Koepke]

https://www.starrett.com/news-events/the-l.s.-starrett-company-enters-into-a-merger-agreement-with-middleground-capital-to-become-private-company


MiddleGround Capital is a private equity firm. It'll be dismantled.

Not sure why you think it will be dismantled. From my reading it looks like MiddleGround wants to move forward with another respected name on their roster.

> https://www.morningstar.com/news/business-wire/20240311078791/the-ls-starrett-company-enters-into-a-merger-agreement-with-middleground-capital-to-become-private-company

From the link above:


“MiddleGround is thrilled to be partnering with Starrett, a brand we have long admired, and a company that we have followed in the public markets for several years. Most of MiddleGround's Operations team gained familiarity with Starrett products over the course of their manufacturing careers, and we are excited about the opportunity to further position the company for its future on the front lines of innovation, advanced manufacturing and reshoring,” said John Stewart, Managing Partner of MiddleGround.

Especially the comment on "reshoring" doesn't sound like dismantling the parts for quick cash. Reshoring is the process of moving overseas manufacturing back to home country soil.

That is starting to be a common practice with "supply line" problems brought about in the past few years.

jtk

[mike stenson]

Because private equity firms are generally interested in turning a quick buck and nothing more. This is true of every area that private equity firms have gotten themselves into since the 80s.

We'll see, but I will be surprised if they don't ruin the company.

[Patty Hann]

I agree with Mike....and the "Starrett quality" will take the first hit.

[John Lanciani]

I agree with Mike....and the "Starrett quality" will take the first hit.

Starrett quality took that hit years ago when they offshored many of their offerings.

[Patty Hann]

Starrett quality took that hit years ago when they offshored many of their offerings.
Yep, I found that out.
I've always bought the Starrett products still made here.

[Mike Henderson]

Private equity firms generally load up the acquired company with a lot of debt which has to be serviced. That leaves little money for research, marketing and other needs of the company. The best you can hope for is that the private equity company eventually sells the acquired company to an entity that wants to build on the products and reputation.

I'd tell the employees to "look out". Private equity companies usually have to reduce expenses (read people) to service that debt.

Mike

[andrew whicker]

I quit and became a full time woodworker a year after being bought by a company that got their funding from a private equity company.

Like said above, the company never had investment money on hand because it was getting eaten up by the investors returns. Once that investment firm had enough they left and our company got funding by another firm etc etc.

It COULD be that this investment firm is different. But in the latest business environment of stock buy backs and ceo or shareholder value ratio to employees going absolutely crazy... I doubt it. But hey anything can happen.

[Ray Selinger]

To woodworkers, it is merely sad, but to machinists, it is heart breaking. The metalworker side of me liked Mitutoyo over Starrett. To a Canuck, they are both imported tools.

[Patty Hann]

To woodworkers, it is merely sad, but to machinists, it is heart breaking. The metalworker side of me liked Mitutoyo over Starrett. To a Canuck, they are both imported tools.
I prefer Mitutoyo also.
My gage blocks, dial indcators, digital calipers, all Mitutoyo.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I was hired by a small privately owned corporation when my enlistment ended in 1976. 20 months later after being promoted to management, the company got into a financial bind due to the passing of the "certificate of need" national legislation and a well-known global corporation purchased us. A couple years later I transferred to Idaho. 4 years after arriving here, J&J sold us to GE. During my 34-year career until I awoke deaf forcing my retirement for safety reasons, I never had to look for a job and yet survived 4 Rifs. Not all corporate buyouts or mergers result in worsening product quality or elimination of positions.

Offshore quality can be as good as US made quality or Japanese quality. It's a matter of setting standards and being ready to pay for it. I have used Starrett tools professionally and personally. I hope they maintain their quality history.

[andrew whicker]

I used to work for GE (O&G before it got split off into Baker Hughes / GE)

GE stopped pensions for new hires in 2012. GE stopped adding to people's pensions in 2021. GE did a huge stock buy back in 2023 of 15 billion - their biggest yet. Congrats to all the shareholders! Sorry to all the GE employees who got a piddly raise.. it was a tough year. Maybe next year. GE decided to have stock buy backs vs pension payouts.

It's a changing world.. and not for the better.

Maybe I'm a pessimist or maybe I'm a realist, but I don't see quality of US goods ever going up w/ these super big companies unless something changes. And I don't have any optimism for large private companies either.

[Rich Engelhardt]

I guess it could be worse.
At least it wasn't Stanley B&D or Irwin that bought them.

[Michael Burnside]

I prefer Mitutoyo also.
My gage blocks, dial indcators, digital calipers, all Mitutoyo.

s/Mitutoyo/Starrett/g

:D

[Edward Weber]

I guess it could be worse.
At least it wasn't Stanley B&D or Irwin that bought them.

Couldn't agree more

[James Jayko]

I think modern manufacturing has made it far easier to make tools of similar enough quality to the high quality tools that Starrett makes for far less money. I mean, all of the iGauging stuff I've bought is definitely plenty accurate for making furniture. And I've bought plenty of Starrett stuff over the years. But it just doesn't seem like you need to pay $200 for a combination square that's square anymore. I mean, the PEC stuff is 30% cheaper and made in the USA already, right?

That said, that $15 Irwin combination square from THD is now and has always been unusable.

[Jimmy Harris]

We'll see.

It looks like MiddleGround Capital owns a bunch of specialized auto racing parts and medium scale industrial equipment manufacturers. So they could just be looking to expand their portfolio and add a marquee name to the list. And, in theory, the businesses under their umbrella do have a lot of similarities, so it's possible that they could use these connections to enhance the quality and productivity of multiple companies. It could actually benefit Starrett and improve their products. Could, I say.

I agree that private equity firms don't have a good reputation. But a lot of that bad reputation was built on them buying retail businesses and then leveraging them with huge amounts of debt in a gamble to quickly explode their growth. And if that failed, they could still turn a healthy profit by selling off their retail spaces and other assets. So it was kind of a win/win scenario for them. Either you grow the company and get rich, or you bankrupt the company and get rich in the sell-off. However, with the collapse of the commercial real estate market, that's not really the case anymore. These days, it's really hard to get rich off of bankrupting a company.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't still ways to turn a profit off of ruining a company. I'm just saying that the old ways of ruining companies to get rich don't really work anymore. So I'm betting that MiddleGround Capital at least has plans to improve Starrett. And judging from the other companies they own, I don't think their plans include taking the name and slapping it on a bunch of low-quality products to sell to the general public. Could be. But that's not what they've done before.

Now whether or not they actually benefit Starrett in the long run remains to be seen. But my guess is, that is their goal.

[Ronald Blue]

I'm not sure they are planning to gut Starrett at all. Looking at their list of companies I think they are more like Berkshire Hathaway in that they purchase companies and help them flourish. Time will tell. Here's a link of that lists their holdings.

https://middleground.com/companies/

[William Hodge]

Doug Starrett has been a decent steward of the company for many years. I hope that this transition benefits the 1,800 people that work at Starrett's. The reason the tools are such high quality is that the people who work there are good at what they do. Many of my relatives and neighbors have worked there for decades. Perhaps the transition from a family owned company to a private equity owned company can preserve the human capitol that makes the company so valuable.

[Patty Hann]

s/Mitutoyo/Starrett/g

:D


:confused: no comprendo your post :confused:

[Keegan Shields]

When private equity companies are mentioned, it always makes me think of that scene in Good Fellas where the main characters are burning down the restaurant for insurance money after maxing out the debt on its business credit.

[Robert Mayer]

When private equity companies are mentioned, it always makes me think of that scene in Good Fellas where the main characters are burning down the restaurant for insurance money after maxing out the debt on its business credit.

Wasnt that Sopranos?

[Tom Bain]

As someone who has worked in private equity for the last 24 years, I understand the negative comments as most folks are only familiar with the failures and misdeeds by some unscrupulous firms because that’s all that makes the evening news and headlines. I work for a firm that invests pension money in private equity funds and the returns (which have outpaced the public markets) we have generated are going to pay the retirements and health care of hard-working everyday people. I can tell you from first hand experience that the majority of the private equity managers are interested in growing businesses and helping them succeed, and sometimes that does involve cutting costs to become more efficient. Unlike most of Wall Street, PE managers invest a significant portion of their own wealth alongside investors so that interests are appropriately aligned. As a specific example, you might be familiar with the company 80/20 which makes aluminum extrusions. They were purchased by a private equity firm a couple years ago as the founder was looking for growth capital and to professionalize the management of the company as part of a sucession plan. The company has flourished under the new ownership. I don’t know Doug Starrett but I know that he is 69 years old and probably looking to retire. There may not be another family member or obvious heir apparent to take over the company and he may be looking to partner with a private equity firm to develop such a plan. I would encourage folks to educate themselves a bit before making blanket disparaging comments about an entire industry.

[Michael Burnside]

:confused: no comprendo your post :confused:

It’s a nerdy regular expression. Replace the first with the last of your previous post ;)

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I used to work for GE (O&G before it got split off into Baker Hughes / GE)

GE stopped pensions for new hires in 2012. GE stopped adding to people's pensions in 2021. GE did a huge stock buy back in 2023 of 15 billion - their biggest yet. Congrats to all the shareholders! Sorry to all the GE employees who got a piddly raise.. it was a tough year. Maybe next year. GE decided to have stock buy backs vs pension payouts.

It's a changing world.. and not for the better.

Maybe I'm a pessimist or maybe I'm a realist, but I don't see quality of US goods ever going up w/ these super big companies unless something changes. And I don't have any optimism for large private companies either.

Andrew, I wish life was simple but it's not.

I stayed in management for 14 months before resigning my position and returning to a bottom feeding field engineering position. I was placed in a position where it became a matter of performing a VPs demands which meant giving up my moral values. About 2 months after I resigned, the VP was fired by J&J. I returned to a field engineering position. 6 1/2 years later, we were sold to GE. For the record I never did agree with Neutron Jack's antics. J&J offered 401Ks after they bought us. My wife and I found it an easy way to save money for long term savings. Later GE did the same and we went with one there too. If you don't see it, you don't miss it. Up until last month I owned GE and GEHC stock. Still own some GEHC stock. Was I a rich shareholder? Hardly but I did own some and still do. I was told that most major corporations have switched to improved and increased 401K strategies versus full pensions. A former coworker who is also now retired joined about 2012 and he got a hybrid pension/401K offering. In my 34 years working for 2 major corporations, I survived 6 RIFs, IIRC.

Andrew, I was 14 when my driller father woke me up one morning at 0100 asking if I wanted to make some money. The drill bit was wore out and the derrick hand had shown up drunk on a night when Dad had to make a trip. At age 15 I began roughnecking morning tower and going to HS days. I finished HS that way. My younger brother did the same. Christmas Eve of 1966 south of Newton, IL I worked all night on the floor of an untarped rig in the freezing rain as we fished to recover 11 drill collars that were left in the hole after a collar washed out. At age 17 I promised myself there had to be a better way to make a living. I found one. My father died in a doghouse on the floor of an oil rig in 1972. I am proudly former oil field trash. BTW, I have screwed on a few Hughes bits but that was several decades ago.

I wouldn't begin to say that GE or any corporation are always good. At the same time, I would not condemn all of them either.

A company that goes out of business supports no workers. If a company's major market switches to a buy cheap, quality be damned place in the market, management is put in a difficult and complex situation. Either reduce costs, expand the market share, seek new markets or go out of business. Labor wages and benefits are costs, meeting environmental standards produces costs, higher priced raw materials are costs, shipping costs, taxes, etc. Thus, for a company to stay in business and support some workers, manufacturing may have to move overseas. You can buy any quality level you desire overseas, it just costs money. Those are realities.

[Patty Hann]

Wasnt that Sopranos?
It was Goodfellas.
It may also have been in the Sopranos (which I have never seen) but Goodfellas pre-dates the Sopranos.

[William Hodge]

As someone who has worked in private equity for the last 24 years, I understand the negative comments as most folks are only familiar with the failures and misdeeds by some unscrupulous firms because that’s all that makes the evening news and headlines. I work for a firm that invests pension money in private equity funds and the returns (which have outpaced the public markets) we have generated are going to pay the retirements and health care of hard-working everyday people. ... ... ..

Couldn't miss the name, is this your side gig?
https://www.baincapital.com/

[Bob Jones 5443]

No aspersions meant to PE firms, but I’m glad I already own my Starrett tools.

[Ray Selinger]

There is a fair bit of polly-anna in these posts. " You may be the best buggy whip manufacturer in the world, but that is of little use when people are buying cars." I regret not buying more Stanley tools in the earlier'70s.They were still making good tools in those days. Those of you who love Starrett tools should not make my mistake.

[John C Cox]

A running, profitable business is worth a lot of money. Nowadays, can't even give away a dilapidated building full rusting machinery. With modern remediation laws, you can't just walk away. Close a factory and you're in for 20 years and and possibly billions of dollars of remediation. Never mind that the economy is begging for USA made stuff for sale.

The thing is - investors and regulators learned the game of the fellows buying out companies, loading them with debt, then closing them down in bankruptcy. The truth was that those businesses enriched the shysters at the expense of everybody else, investors included.

The company I work for got sold to private equity several years ago, and it was the best thing that had happened in 10 years. They poured investment in, sorted out management, and stopped the foolishness our previous parent company engaged in.

[Tom Bain]

Couldn't miss the name, is this your side gig?
https://www.baincapital.com/

No, I don’t work for Bain … although I wish I had access to their capital!

[James Jayko]

Like lots of other people on here I'm sure, I ponied up the $130/each for a 12" and 6" combo and a 4" double square from Starrett when I started trying to make things. They're excellent, for sure. But I look back and laugh that I didn't just buy the iGauging things and spend $200 somewhere else which might be more productive for woodworking. There is SQUARE, and then there is SQUARE ENOUGH FOR GOVERMENT WORK. I don't think I really need the former...

[Patty Hann]

Like lots of other people on here I'm sure, I ponied up the $130/each for a 12" and 6" combo and a 4" double square from Starrett when I started trying to make things. They're excellent, for sure. But I look back and laugh that I didn't just buy the iGauging things and spend $200 somewhere else which might be more productive for woodworking. There is SQUARE, and then there is SQUARE ENOUGH FOR GOVERMENT WORK. I don't think I really need the former...
What is "square enough?" 1 degree off? 1/2 degree? 1/10 degree?
Seriously... what, for you, is "square enough"?
If a square is off by say, 1/10 of a degree, then over 80 inches (height of a standard door) the error at the other end is between 1/8 and 5/32" off.
(tan 0.1 = x/80).
That is pretty noticeable.

[Ray Selinger]

I think square enough depends on whether it's for metal working or woodworking. A couple of days back I checked a cut with my 1971 Stanley 12" combination square, though I have couple of machinist quality combination squares and a couple of engineer squares. I didn't bother getting either one.

[Brian Holcombe]

What is "square enough?" 1 degree off? 1/2 degree? 1/10 degree?
Seriously... what, for you, is "square enough"?
If a square is off by say, 1/10 of a degree, then over 80 inches (height of a standard door) the error at the other end is between 1/8 and 5/32" off.
(tan 0.1 = x/80).
That is pretty noticeable.

I agree completely.

0.0005" over 6" is generally square enough in my shop for the try squares. If I use this as a general parameter for how square a tenon shoulder should be, the results create doors that will square up to better than 1/32" over most size door frames that I build (7-9' x 30-50" wide).

For the Table saw I stick to a similar level of squareness, using the larger square which is .001" over 15" or so. It produces accurate cuts that when translated to a panel I usually cannot notice a deviation from corner to corner.

Accuracy and precision open the door to efficiency, efficiency allows for expedient quality. Expedient quality produces return on investment.

People often think backwards about this, in my opinion. They often think that precision and accuracy make the job take longer, which can be true. What shortens the time is setup, if you equipment is accurate and repeatable, then their precision will make it so that you do not have to second guess and that will speed things up tremendously.

This all starts with precision checking tools, which I think are worth every dollar paid.

[Bob Jones 5443]

I just prefer to have an excellent tool, if I can afford it. My only Starretts are a 24” straightedge and a 12” combo square with 45° fixture. I sat in wait for a sale price on the former, and I bought the square used at a great price from a fine fellow here in the Creek.

[William Hodge]

Most of my Starrett tools came from the town dump. We used to have a metal pile at the dump. People would throw metal in a pile, and a scrapper would take it to the scrap yard.

One day I found what must have been a clean out from a Starrett employee's house. There were 12" and 18" square blades in satin chrome finish, dozens of radius gauges, squares, several dozen 3", 6" 12" 18" and 24 " rulers, thickness gauges, center finders, dividers, trammel points, tool holders, set up blocks, and stuff I don't know the name of. Most of the stuff had the distinctive red grease paint mark that means it was seconds. I gave a lot of the multiples away. Who needs twenty of the same 15/64" Starrett radius gauges? I made racks to hold the stuff I use, so it doesn't get damaged. The rest is in boxes on a shelf for the next guy.

[Michael Burnside]

What is "square enough?" 1 degree off? 1/2 degree? 1/10 degree?
Seriously... what, for you, is "square enough"?
If a square is off by say, 1/10 of a degree, then over 80 inches (height of a standard door) the error at the other end is between 1/8 and 5/32" off.
(tan 0.1 = x/80).
That is pretty noticeable.

I wouldn’t use a square to hang a door. But you’re not wrong that accumulated error is bad, but I think the poster was implying that chasing absolute precision in woodworking is a product of diminishing returns.

I have several squares I payed good money for that look square and I have built thousands of dollars worth of furniture using them. I built a crosscut sled with my 18” square, no 5-cut method employed. I have no idea what the error is, I couldn’t care less. I use the same tools in the same way on every build and my stuff always comes out looking square.

And THAT is square enough. ;)

[Patty Hann]

I wouldn’t use a square to hang a door. But you’re not wrong that accumulated error is bad, but I think the poster was implying that chasing absolute precision in woodworking is a product of diminishing returns.

I have several squares I payed good money for that look square and I have built thousands of dollars worth of furniture using them. I built a crosscut sled with my 18” square, no 5-cut method employed. I have no idea what the error is, I couldn’t care less. I use the same tools in the same way on every build and my stuff always comes out looking square.

And THAT is square enough. ;)

Fair enough (that rhymes, you see, with what you said :)).
And I used the door example to illustrate the accumulative error... but I think it would still be significant enough if one were making, say, a bank of kitchen cabinets.

One thing I find kind of headscratching is that the same folks who are Ok with a not quite square square will use a razor sharp marking knife to make a cut line.
Now, as long as you know the error/tolerance of your square, or any tool, and as long as you maintain consistency in accounting for that error, you will be fine (and that "sign" + or - is also important :D)

[Michael Burnside]

Fair enough (that rhymes, you see, with what you said :)).
And I used the door example to illustrate the accumulative error... but I think it would still be significant enough if one were making, say, a bank of kitchen cabinets.

One thing I find kind of headscratching is that the same folks who are Ok with a not quite square square will use a razor sharp marking knife to make a cut line.
Now, as long as you know the error/tolerance of your square, or any tool, and as long as you maintain consistency in accounting for that error, you will be fine (and that "sign" + or - is also important :D)

Yea, head scratcher for sure. Good old number 5 lead is ok for me. I try to measure as little as possible and cut/plan/layout to maximize moving my fence or making the same cut without changing. When I do measure it’s the aforementioned tools I rely on!