How this headline may connect to industries in New Hampshire. Technical scores are below — click any ? for what a metric means.
An American staple: A look inside NH.Driving past Acme Staple Company in Franklin, it’s hard to imagine what’s really happening inside this nearly 70-year-old factory.From the outside, little seems to have changed over the years.It looks almost still, but inside tells a much different story.Step through the front doors of this old 40,000-square-foot brick building and you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a bustling full-scale staple factory alive with the sound of machines clattering with a fast, metallic rhythm, and spools of wire being shaped into staples and boxed up by hand.“We’re still sort of a largely old-fashioned company doing things in an older way,” company president and owner Tom Gold said.Most people only know the humble staple as the small metal pieces that keep their papers together, but the reality is they aren’t just for paper.Staples can be used for a wide range of applications, from agriculture to construction, which is why Acme Staple has carved out a niche in the staple industry.In fact, Gold said Acme is one of only three major staple manufacturers in the United States.The company has a storied history.It was founded in Philadelphia in 1894, later moved to Camden, N.J., and then settled at 87 Hill Road in Franklin in 1959.Gold’s father bought the company from the Cook family in 1972, and he came aboard in 1988.When Acme Staple was founded, Gold said the owner at the time had the original patent for cohered staples.“You used to have individual staples that you would use for whatever you would use them for, but he figured out how to glue them together in a stick or what we call a strip,” Gold said.The company may be small, employing 20 to 30 people, but Gold said “we swing above our weight in terms of importance in the industry.” It has contracts with many large companies, and among its products, Acme sells cable tacker guns that are used to install fiber optic low-voltage wire for telecommunication and fire alarm applications.“So our guns are on every Verizon truck in the country,” Gold said.In many ways, the world of staples is far more complex and essential than most people realize.Staples play a critical role across various industries.For instance, agricultural staples are used to attach wire fences to posts, ensuring safety and structure in farming.Staples are used to affix low-voltage wires to wooden surfaces, and some are designed specifically for medical use, such as closing wounds.Gold said the company even makes staples for caskets.Over the years, Gold said the company has manufactured more than 500 different products, offering custom designs that cater to different dimensions, materials and points.The manufacturing of staples can be done through traditional and mass production methods.Gold said the traditional method involves making a wire travel over a die, hitting it with tooling, forming an individual staple, and pushing it down a bar where it gets glued and eventually cut off into a stick.This method allows for more flexibility and customization, making it ideal for smaller runs.“That’s the old-fashioned way and that’s mostly the way we do it because it’s easier to set up,” Gold said.For staples seen in offices, manufacturers use a mass production method with multiple spools of wire that feed into machines to create large quantities of staples quickly.According to Gold, this process is efficient for producing standard office staples but lacks the customization options of the traditional method.The staple industry has faced significant challenges due to outsourcing and overseas manufacturing.With 80% to 90% of staples used in the U.S.being produced abroad, Acme Staple Co.has found its niche by focusing on specialized applications.“Like many American businesses, we’ve been forced to the edges of the manufacturing platform, if you will, with a lot of the mass production going to Asia,” Gold said.Acme made a broad range of staples in the early days when most staples came from the U.S., but in the 1960s and 1970s, the company transitioned to making staples that were used to attach buckles and bows on women’s shoes.“When the shoemaking industry went south and then offshore and then way offshore to Asia, which is where a lot of shoes are made, that business went away and we started to focus on other special kinds of staples,” Gold said.The company takes pride in its “Made in America” identity, which is reflected in the signs displayed throughout the factory and the American-made labels affixed to boxes of staples.Barbara Comtois, a controller at Acme, is also proud of the company’s position in the industry, which is one she was unfamiliar with until she joined.“I worked in a lot of industries in the past, but definitely not staples.We’re a small company and we’re pretty family oriented.I love it here.The Golds are great people,” said Comtois, who is also a state representative representing the towns of Alton and Barnstead and serves on the Committee on Environment and Agriculture.While it has called New Hampshire home for decades, Acme doesn’t do a lot of business in the state and in many ways has kept a low profile here.Gold can’t recall any political candidates ever visiting the factory.“You would think small business — basic industry — you would have gotten somebody who would be interested.… I’m sure we’re partly to blame that we don’t focus a lot on publicizing ourselves,” he said.Still, Gold said Acme has no plans to move and is looking forward to another 125 years, but he knows it won’t be his job to carry on its staple legacy in New Hampshire.“It will be somebody else,” he said.