183-year-old giant tool company closes factory, lays off dozens

183-year-old giant tool company closes factory, lays off dozens

Kirk O’Neil

Fri, August 28, 2026 at 7:03 PM GMT+3 3 min read

• SWK -2.18%

Underperforming store locations have been a major problem for various retail sectors, such as supermarkets, apparel shops, and drugstore chains, forcing retailers to close shops to eliminate a drain on liquidity.

Restaurants have also closed struggling locations to cut their losses, and now manufacturers are also closing underperforming facilities as well.

Giant tool company Stanley Black & Decker Inc. plans to close its underperforming Hampstead, Md., factory and lay off 55 workers, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice filed with the Maryland Department of Labor on Aug. 19.

Factory closes, workers laid off

Layoffs at the factory are set to begin on Oct. 23, 2026, and continue through the facility's closing by March 26, 2027, according to the WARN notice.

"Over the past few years, we have seen a steady decline in volume in the materials produced at our Hampstead, Maryland, manufacturing facility," Stanley Black & Decker spokesperson Debora Raymond told the Baltimore Sun.

"Due to this we are announcing our intent to close the site. We are focused on providing a smooth transition to impacted employees, including options for employment at other Stanley Black & Decker U.S. facilities and operations for salaried employees, in addition to severance, and job placement support services for both salaried and hourly employees," Raymond said.

The roots of Stanley Black & Decker trace back to 1843 when Frederick T. Stanley co-founded Stanley Bolt Manufactory and later founded The Stanley Works in 1852.

Black & Decker was founded by S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker as a small machine shop in Baltimore in 1910, making machines for producing milk bottle caps and for candy dipping, according to the Black & Decker website.

Company patented a handheld electric drill

The company patented a handheld electric drill in 1917 and opened a large-scale manufacturing facility in Towson, Md., in 1929.

Stanley and Black & Decker completed their merger in 2010 to become Stanley Black & Decker. The company is the world's largest tool company with $15.13 billion in revenue in 2025, according to VerityRank.

Plant once employed 3,800 workers

Decades before the two tool companies merged, Black & Decker built the Hampstead factory in 1951 to manufacture power tools. The plant grew to 374 acres with a 30-acre parking lot for its 3,800 employees by 1969.

The company closed the Towson facility in 1965, but it remained Black & Decker's headquarters.

The Hampstead factory employed 2,000 workers in the 1970s, but in December 1985, the company closed its power tool manufacturing operations when efforts to modernize the plant failed. The factory became the East Coast's principal distribution center instead.

Company sold Hampstead facility

The company sold the Hampstead facility to AG/GFI Hampstead Inc. for $2.7 million in 1999, but Black & Decker maintained a small distribution facility on the site and retained responsibility for environmental issues related to its historic operations.

The Hampstead factory's primary use before closing was for powdered metal manufacturing and limited warehousing and distribution.

Stanley Black & Decker's factory closure follows other closings of underperforming businesses, such as drugstore chain Walgreens closing about 100 stores in 2026, supermarket chain Raley's closing seven locations in California and Nevada in 2026 and 2027, and The Gap affiliate Old Navy closing stores in New York and Pennsylvania in the first half of 2026.

Related: Popular brewery stops making beer, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Aug 28, 2026, where it first appeared in the Retail section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.