Singer sold sewing machines on credit and built the world's biggest factory in Scotland
Isaac Singer did not invent the sewing machine, and he lost a patent fight over it. What his company mastered was selling: door-to-door demonstrators, rent-to-own deals and a Scottish factory turning out 13,000 machines a week. By 1860 no firm on Earth made more of them.
Singer and New York lawyer Edward C. Clark founded I. M. Singer and Co. in 1851, the year Singer won patent 8294 for a machine with a circular feed wheel, a thread controller and gear-driven power. It was the first practical model for home use, but it relied on the eye-pointed needle and lockstitch of Elias Howe, who beat Singer in court in 1854. The rivals eventually pooled patents, and Singer's mass production soon made his firm the largest maker in the world.
Marketing was the real invention. Customers could rent a machine and have the payments count toward buying it, and canvassers carried machines from door to door to show how they worked. Advertising tied the product to ideals of domestic virtue and diligence. The time savings helped families sewing at home, though professional seamstresses saw their already low wages fall further.
Glasgow got a plant in 1867, chosen for its ironworks, cheap labour and shipping. Demand kept outrunning supply, so in 1882 work began on a new complex at Kilbowie in Clydebank, crowned by a clock tower 200 feet tall and threaded with miles of internal railway. Its nearly 7,000 workers made it the largest sewing machine factory anywhere, and in 1913 it shipped 1.3 million machines. In 1911 some 10,000 employees walked out to back twelve women polishers facing heavier work without extra pay.
Wars turned the company toward arms. Clydebank made 361,000 horseshoes among other supplies in the First World War, and in the Second a US order produced 500 pistols, one of which fetched 414,000 dollars at a 2017 auction. The Scottish plant closed in June 1980.
Source: Singer Corporation
