Zippers

Tired of lacing up his boots, a Chicagoan named W. L, Judson in 1893 devised the world's first slide fastener. It worked badly, but it made an instantaneous impression upon Colonel Lewis Walker, a lawyer from Meadville, Pa. Colonel Walker spent the next 20 years and about $1,000,000 collected from a multitude of sources, before he began to achieve any commercial success with the gadget. Judson was unable to perfect it and it was not until 1913 that one Gideon Sundback developed the "zipper" as everyone now knows it. Started that year in a $300-a-year shack in Meadville, Hookless Fastener Co., maker of "Talon" fasteners, immediately went to town, is now the biggest of 16-odd U. S. zipper makers.

Total Hookless production has never been revealed, for Colonel Walker and Son Walter Delawater Walker are incurably publicity-shy, but zippermen estimate it as about 35,000,000 zippers a year, or 75% of total U. S. production. Hookless' only worry is Japan, which has jumped into zippers and, despite a 66% tariff, can still undersell Hookless by 25% in the U. S. Last year Japan sold 26,000,000 zippers in the U. S. But Hookless has little to fear. FORTUNE estimated Hookless gross at $4,500,000 in 1931, and it is presumably over $6,000,000 now, with profits near $1,000,000. Total outstanding stock is only 3,906 shares and these are held by 145 persons. Last week this stock was valued at about $3,000 a share, when an announcement was made by Colonel Walker. Pondering plant expansion financed by a possible public offering of shares, President Walker proposed to split stock 250 for 1, change the name of the company to Talon, Inc. Zip, the price of shares was bid up to $3,500, but there were no sales.

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