Corporations: Going In for Outing

Fifty miles from the nearest telephone and 40 times that far from his office, Businessman Sheldon Coleman, 65, last week happily cast for salmon in the upper Jupiter River of eastern Canada's Anticosti Island. Coleman was on Anticosti for business reasons as well as pleasure. Back in Wichita, Kans., he is president of the Coleman Co., Inc., a 66-year-old firm that made the Coleman lamp and the Coleman stove famous, and is now expanding into a complete line of "outing products." For a tryout on Anticosti, Coleman brought with him a new two-burner stove, a new lantern fuel, and a new tent flooring of vinyl and nylon, which he spread on the rock-strewn ground and vigorously gave what he calls "the stomp test."

Burgeoning Market. Coleman was happy not only because the salmon were running and his new equipment worked well, but also because of the burgeoning market for his products. "One out of every three days," he said, "is now a holiday for the ordinary workingman. And more people are spending their leisure time in outdoor recreation." The trek to the outdoors has resulted in a multi-billion dollar U.S. market for recreational equipment, double what it was only five years ago.

Along with lamps and stoves, Coleman sells heaters, jugs and picnic chests, last year acquired two smaller manufacturers of tents and sleeping bags. "Tents," says Coleman, "are growing in popularity. They don't cost much, and some people just like tents because they get close to nature in them." This year Coleman acquired Regis-Trimline, Inc. of Milwaukee, a maker of collapsible camping trailers; next month the company will open a new plant in Somerset, Pa., to make more of the trailers as well as more tents and sleeping bags. In all, Coleman had first-half sales of $35.4 million, up 31% from last year; earnings are up 20%, largely from outing products but also from Coleman's other lines of heating and air-conditioning equipment.

Disastrous Declines. All this is evidence of a dramatic change in the fortunes of the Coleman Co. Sheldon's father, William C. Coleman, built the business on a gasoline lamp that was cleaner and more illuminating than the kerosene lamps of the day; it became a household staple in unelectrified rural America.

The New Deal and REA wiped out much of the demand for the lamp, and the company lost a lot of money. Sheldon Coleman, a graduate engineer from Cornell who had spent his college summers as a professional guide in Canada, helped move the family firm into oil space-heaters and floor furnaces. But once again, progress—this time in the form of central heating—caused a crisis. "During the decade of the '50s," he recalls, "the market for oil space-heaters and floor furnaces decreased between 80% and 90%."

Sheldon Coleman became president in 1951, and vowed "never to get caught again while targeting in on a declining market." He reorganized the company, moved it into new lines, put more stress on foreign business, which now accounts for 25% of company revenues. Part of the business abroad comes from sales of lanterns and stoves in underdeveloped countries. But more and more, at home and abroad, it derives from outing products for leisurely living.