September 25, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, for more than a century, Daisy has been synonymous with B.B. guns. First launched in Michigan and later based in Arkansas, the company grew from small beginnings into the most recognized name in the industry. Its Red Ryder model became an icon of American childhood, sparking memories of backyard target practice and the famous line from A Christmas Story: “You’ll shoot your eye out!” Joe Murfin tells the story of how Daisy turned a simple air rifle into an enduring symbol of American culture.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we return to our American stories. Up next to
the story of a truly iconic American company, Daisy. Today.
Daisy is a leading youth sports and BB gun manufacturer
that most of us at least know about. Perhaps a
few of us have even owned a Daisy BB gun
at some point in our lives. Here to tell the
(00:30):
story of the company is Joe Murphin, the chairman of
the board at the Daisy Air Gun Museum in Beautiful Rogers, Arkansas.
Take it away, shoe.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Daisy is what's considered to be a superbrand. A superbrand
is one that survives in one business for a great
length of time. It's also one that's identified by top
of mind awareness. When you ask somebody to name a
soda company, you're always going to hear Coca Cola. When
(01:08):
you ask somebody to name a tractor company, you're always
going to hear John Deere, maybe first, certainly within the
first two. When you ask somebody to name a BB gun, inevitably,
Daisy is over ninety eight percent of the time the
first words that come out of their mouth unaided. My
(01:32):
name is Joe Murphin. I worked for Daisy Manufacturing Company
from nineteen ninety nine to twenty seventeen. During that time
I helped to develop and oversee the nonprofit corporation Daisy
Airgun Museum, the Rogers Daisy Airgun Museum, and I remain
as chairman of the board of that nonprofit corporation. Today,
(01:56):
a lot of people want to know about Daisy Manufacturing,
which which is the most popular brand of air gun,
A brand that everyone knows, But a lot of people
want to know how did Daisy get its name? Well,
you really can't tell the story of Daisy Manufacturing Company
without dealing with three companies that were in business in
(02:18):
the eighteen eighties in Plymouth, Michigan. By the way, Plymouth
is just today outside of Detroit, and even back then
it was not a far buggy ride from downtown Detroit
out the Plymouth and Plymouth was, as Detroit is, a
very industrial town. It had a railroad and it had
(02:38):
a river. And back then, if you had a railroad
in the river, you had industry, or you would soon
have industry. The three companies though, that I think we
need to talk about a little bit are Market Manufacturing,
the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company formed by Clarence Hamilton, and
the Plymouth Air Rifle Company, which was Hamilton's company through
(02:58):
which he made some air guns. Markham Manufacturing, founded by
a gentleman named Phil Markham in eighteen seventy nine, made
buckets and cisterns and horse troughs. They were in the
business of making things out of wood that would hold water.
And Phil Markham and his son first envisioned the idea
(03:22):
and produced a little wood air gun in eighteen eighty six,
and they took it up to Chicago. Now in our
museum we have an example of this gun, and if
you look at it, it's a slat of wood, much
like would be a stave from a barrel, only it's
not bent, and they've inserted a little brass barrel in it,
and it's a brake action gun. And so they were
(03:44):
just toying with the idea producing this. They took it
up to a show in Chicago, and there was a
distributor there that said, we want exclusive rights to this gun,
but you have to name it the Chicago So they
were by two years later producing about one hundred guns
a day, and they actually built a new factory totally
(04:07):
dedicated to their air rifle business. The Plymouth Air Rifle
Company was owned by a gentleman named Clarence Hamilton, who
was a prolific inventor of lots of things and repairers
of lots of things. And if you ever search US
Patents and Trademarks dot gov, you'll find lots of patents
(04:28):
by Clarence Jay Hamilton. And in eighteen eighty two he
founded another company called the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company. Most
windmills back then were made out of wood. The derricks
were made out of wood, and the blades were made
out of wood, and they had a vein like a
tail to them that would orient the face of the
windmill into the wind. Mister Hamilton's windmill was He called
(04:53):
it the iron windmill. It was all iron and steel,
and these were used for today we think of windmills
as reducing energy, and wind the energy for electricity. No
electricity in eighteen eighty two. So this was to pump
water for stock at the farm. And so he invents
this windmill. It has a rudder instead of a tail,
(05:13):
and it has a counterbalance weight, and those two things
not only would orient the windmill into the wind, but
at different wind speeds, the blades of the windmill would
actually can't or turn a little bit as an airplane
propeller does at different speeds in order to more efficiently
turn the wind into a pumping motion energy. So the
(05:40):
Windmill Company was in business and selling the steel windmill.
They hired a salesman who would ride out about a
one hundred mile radius territory to try to sell the
windmill to farmers. At the same time, Hamilton, the inventor
of the windmill, had built a little wooden gun similar
(06:00):
to Markham's gun, and he was only selling about fifty
guns a day, much like when he produced the windmill,
when mills were all made out of wood, he made
a steel one because he thought it would be better.
He looked at the wooden Markham guns and he thought,
I can make a better one out of steel. So
he made a little steal what's now referred to as
(06:20):
a wire stock or a wire frame gun. In the
stock of the gun was just a piece of wire
been into the shape of a gun stock. And then
he realized he really didn't have the capability to produce those,
certainly not hundreds of them a day, so he took
it to the general manager of the windmill Company, a
(06:41):
man by the name of Lewis cass Huff, and he says, Louis,
I made this in my garage. I can't produce them
to the capacity I think I should have to do.
But the Windmill Company could produce this gun for us,
and this would be a good product diversification. By eighteen eight,
the time at which he made this little all steel
(07:03):
bb gun air rifle, the Windmill Company was struggling. They
realized that their windmill literally weighed a ton and that
they could only distribute in about a one one hundred
mile radius, so they're very limited in their marketing territory.
Most farmers had a windmill, so it's a better windmill,
But do you need a better windmill when you have
one that's working that's made out of wood. So they
(07:24):
actually had a board meeting in which they pulled all
the officers of the board whether or not they should
file bankruptcy, and we Daisy Manufacturing today are very thankful
that it failed by one vote, that of the general manager.
So when Clarence took this little gun to the general
manager of the Windmill Company and said we could diversify,
(07:45):
he was actually trying to save his own company also,
so mister Lewis cass Huff takes the gun, fires it
into his waistbasket. He likes it, takes it outside. He
puts a little shingle up against the stump and he
fires the b be into the shingle. It splits the shingle,
and he turns to Clarence and he wants to tell
(08:06):
him how much he likes the gun. I love having
young people in the museum and asking them, what would
you tell me if I handed you something you really
liked and you wanted to express that to me? And
they say, it's cool, that gun's cool, that gun's radical,
that gun's awesome, And I tell them we could be
the Austin Radical Sick Air Gun Company today. But the
(08:29):
colloquialism that dates back to as early as eighteen eighty
was it's a daisy. If you liked it, it's a daisy.
So there are two recordings of that statement. One is boy,
it's a daisy. One is Clarence, it's a daisy. Frankly,
I don't know that it matters, but the idea was
the gun was exceptional, he liked it. He called it
(08:50):
a daisy. And so the first guns they are embossed
with the words Plymouth Iron Windmill Co, Plymouth, Mish. Because
we used four letters back then to abbreviate states, Patton
applied for and Daisy, and Daisy was simply the name
of the gun. It wasn't the name of the company
at all.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And you're listening to Joe Murphin telling the story of
a superbrand, a real superbrand. The Daisy air Gun history
continues after these commercial messages, and we're back with our
(09:40):
American stories and our story on Daisy, the iconic manufacturer
of BB guns in America. When we last left off,
Joe Murfin the chairman of the board at the Daisy
air Gun Museum in beautiful Rogers, Arkansas. I urge anyone
who's ever in that area to visit. It's one of
the most beautiful parts of this country. He was telling
(10:02):
us about how Daisy, then a product of a windmill
company in Plymouth, Michigan, got its name. He was also
telling us about these three companies in Plymouth market manufacturing,
the aforementioned Plymouth Iron Windmill Company and the Plymouth Air
Rifle Company. Soon these three companies would come together. Let's
(10:22):
continue with the story.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's really the Daisy story of how it came to
be and how it came to be named now. The
salesman told the story some forty years later that he
personally would buy the bb guns for seventy five cents
a piece. He would take them out and run his
route with his horse and buggy, and he had a
small reproduction model of the steel windmill that he took
(10:47):
with him a sample, and when he met with a farmer,
he would offer him the windmill. He would present the
gun for two dollars apiece, trying to make his money,
but he said he was authorized to sell the gun
for a dollar if the farmer would put him up,
give him room and board for himself and his horse
in the barn over the weekend, so that he didn't
(11:08):
have to ride the one hundred miles back to his hometown.
So the company changed its name to Daisy Manufacturing in
eighteen ninety five, and Clarence Hamilton when he gave that
gun to his windmill company, because he was the one
(11:30):
that founded the windmill company and organized the local business people.
He and his son continued making Plymouth air rifle guns,
and they also then continue to make twenty two firearms,
but shortly after he gave that gun to the Plymouth
Iron Windmill Company. He said, you can have the patent
of this gun and have the rights to produce and
(11:52):
sell this gun if you remain profitable. If the company
doesn't remain profitable, I'm taking my gun back. Don't know
that he could have legally done so, but that was
the agreement they had. Well, in eighteen ninety nine, a
customer approach the Markham Company. Remember the Markham Company was
making buckets and then started making air guns. This is
(12:12):
how these companies were all in or related, and they
challenged Markham to make an air gun, but it had
to be an all steel air gun. They'd seen the
Plymouth Air Rifle air gun, so Daisy agreed to make
two guns for the Markham Company. So now they're making
guns for their competitor. One of the board members on
Markham's board had been the person to take this opportunity
(12:36):
to Daisy Manufacture and saying, you guys were making steel windmills,
you're making steel guns. You can make this gun that
we need made for our customer. Phil Markham, the founder
of the Markham Company, due to a family situation, decides
that he's going to take his small fortune and move
(12:59):
to California in nineteen twelve. By nineteen sixteen, he has
sold all of his stock to two executives at Daisy.
So two executives working for Daisy now own the majority
of stock or all of the stock in the Markham Company.
But during the Great Depression, these two executives decided that
they could no longer personally own the stock in Markham,
(13:23):
and so they sold the stock of Markham to the
Daisy Manufacturing Company. And that's how Daisy and Markham became
one company. Since Markham made their first gun in eighteen
eighty six, Daisy began saying, we've been in the air
(13:45):
gun business since eighteen eighty six. That first little gun
that Lewis Kassev shot into the shingle was made in
eighteen eighty eight, but because they required Markham, they started
using the line since eighteen eighty six. When I joined them,
I found that a bit difficult to say that we've
been in the business, and now we acquired a business
(14:06):
that's been in the business. But who was I to
change history at that point. So from eighteen eighty nine,
when Daisy made the first patented days be begun as
Plymouth Iron Windmill Company to eighteen ninety five when they
(14:26):
became Daisy Manufacturing Company. Then by nineteen fifteen we know
that the company grew exponentially. They went from one two
story building to a dozen buildings. They occupied everything in Plymouth,
Michigan between the railroad line and the switcher line, and
(14:46):
winners were tough in Michigan and still are today. Originally,
the buildings at the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company and then
the buildings at Daisy Manufacturing weren't even connected with each other.
Imagine as a manufacturer that you're doing different processes to
your products in different buildings and then you have to
(15:09):
go outside to take them to the next building. That
had to bring some challenges during the winter, I'm sure.
And of course Detroit was known, and of course Plymouth
was very close to Detroit, and they were known as
the Motortown. Motown. They were known as the headquarters of
the big three automakers for GM and Chrysler. Those were
the big companies to work for. So if you held
(15:30):
a job with Daisy and you learned the trade, and
you became a specialist at some machinery or something, then
your ultimate goal is to go to the Big three
auto workers and make more money. You could make more
money building four hundred and fifty dollars car than you
could make building a dollar and a half be begun.
(15:50):
So by nineteen fifty eight, cass Huff, who was the
grandson of Lewis cass Huff, who had said the words clearance,
it's a day now Cass is vice president of the company.
His father Edward as president. But cass is a young
man and he's on the track to become president. He's
(16:10):
been a pilot in World War Two. He flew p
thirty eights, and he builds a couple airplanes, and he
holds one of Michigan's first pilot licenses, which he got
as a teenager. So he's quite the pilot. He loves flying.
He flies all over the country. He has a job
that allows him to and requires him to fly a lot.
(16:32):
And Daisy has its own corporate airplane, and so he's
flying on a trip to the South. He stops the
refuel in Rogers, Arkansas. There's not much in Rogers, Arkansas
in nineteen fifty eight. Today we're a town approaching seventy
thousand in a metropolitan area that's much larger than that
were bordered by Bentonville Walmart's headquarters. But in nineteen fifty eight,
(16:57):
Roger was more of a of a separate small town
with six thousand people. Mister cass Huff, he comes here,
he lands at the grass strip at the airport. He
likes the people, and he announces that I would bring
my company here, but I won't land on a dirt
runway anymore. You've got to pay this runway. And the
(17:19):
city of Rogers took him seriously, and they began the
court Daisy. And so he declared he would bring his
company here, and he did. Of the seven hundred employees,
he offered all of them to keep their jobs if
they wanted to move to Arkansas. They didn't know much
about Arkansas, and people weren't as transient as we are today.
(17:39):
They didn't leave their families and their history of their
family just to go take a job somewhere. So one
hundred families took him up on the offer of moving
the Rogers and he brought him down here a few
at a time on the airplane. But imagine a town
of six thousand people and just accept my math that
that was probably fifteen hundred homes in Rogers, Arkansas, and
(18:03):
all of a sudden, you need one hundred more homes.
That's a large percentage overnight growth. And so in nineteen
fifty eight a lot of good growth happened because of
Daisy moving one hundred families here overnight. Things that make
us a superbrand, I think are multi generational. Certainly, people
(18:26):
that have a Daisy aer gun today, their parents probably
had one, their grandparents have always had one. It's the
type of thing that you hand down as a right
of passage within your family. A lot of people own
the b begun that belong to their grandfather, their great grandmother,
and they value those things and they pass it down
and therefore the brand becomes important to them. In my
(18:51):
experience with Daisy and marketing and public relations, I often
said that our brand isn't what we think it is,
it's what others think it is. And it's a very
personal thing. And that's when a brand becomes a brand,
And it's not just a logo or a name that
somebody can throw out. It's something that you have a
(19:11):
heartfelt identity with that it means something to you. So
it's the most valuable thing that the company carries on
its balance sheet. Is the goodwill of the Daisy brand name,
the historic value of it, and the part that it's
played in the heritage of our country. If you look
(19:34):
back to the days when Daisy was founded as a
windmill company in the eighteen eighties, and how the company,
how the country has changed, and how the company has
progressed over the years, that's what makes it ingrained in
people's minds.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And a terrific job by Katrina Hine collecting the audio
and the story, and a great job is always by
Monte Montgomery on the editing and the production the story
of the Daisy air Gun. Here on our American Stories
And we return to our American stories. Up next to
the story of a truly iconic American company, Daisy. Today.
Daisy is a leading youth sports and BB gun manufacturer
that most of us at least know about. Perhaps a
few of us have even owned a Daisy BB gun
at some point in our lives. Here to tell the
(00:30):
story of the company is Joe Murphin, the chairman of
the board at the Daisy Air Gun Museum in Beautiful Rogers, Arkansas.
Take it away, shoe.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Daisy is what's considered to be a superbrand. A superbrand
is one that survives in one business for a great
length of time. It's also one that's identified by top
of mind awareness. When you ask somebody to name a
soda company, you're always going to hear Coca Cola. When
(01:08):
you ask somebody to name a tractor company, you're always
going to hear John Deere, maybe first, certainly within the
first two. When you ask somebody to name a BB gun, inevitably,
Daisy is over ninety eight percent of the time the
first words that come out of their mouth unaided. My
(01:32):
name is Joe Murphin. I worked for Daisy Manufacturing Company
from nineteen ninety nine to twenty seventeen. During that time
I helped to develop and oversee the nonprofit corporation Daisy
Airgun Museum, the Rogers Daisy Airgun Museum, and I remain
as chairman of the board of that nonprofit corporation. Today,
(01:56):
a lot of people want to know about Daisy Manufacturing,
which which is the most popular brand of air gun,
A brand that everyone knows, But a lot of people
want to know how did Daisy get its name? Well,
you really can't tell the story of Daisy Manufacturing Company
without dealing with three companies that were in business in
(02:18):
the eighteen eighties in Plymouth, Michigan. By the way, Plymouth
is just today outside of Detroit, and even back then
it was not a far buggy ride from downtown Detroit
out the Plymouth and Plymouth was, as Detroit is, a
very industrial town. It had a railroad and it had
(02:38):
a river. And back then, if you had a railroad
in the river, you had industry, or you would soon
have industry. The three companies though, that I think we
need to talk about a little bit are Market Manufacturing,
the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company formed by Clarence Hamilton, and
the Plymouth Air Rifle Company, which was Hamilton's company through
(02:58):
which he made some air guns. Markham Manufacturing, founded by
a gentleman named Phil Markham in eighteen seventy nine, made
buckets and cisterns and horse troughs. They were in the
business of making things out of wood that would hold water.
And Phil Markham and his son first envisioned the idea
(03:22):
and produced a little wood air gun in eighteen eighty six,
and they took it up to Chicago. Now in our
museum we have an example of this gun, and if
you look at it, it's a slat of wood, much
like would be a stave from a barrel, only it's
not bent, and they've inserted a little brass barrel in it,
and it's a brake action gun. And so they were
(03:44):
just toying with the idea producing this. They took it
up to a show in Chicago, and there was a
distributor there that said, we want exclusive rights to this gun,
but you have to name it the Chicago So they
were by two years later producing about one hundred guns
a day, and they actually built a new factory totally
(04:07):
dedicated to their air rifle business. The Plymouth Air Rifle
Company was owned by a gentleman named Clarence Hamilton, who
was a prolific inventor of lots of things and repairers
of lots of things. And if you ever search US
Patents and Trademarks dot gov, you'll find lots of patents
(04:28):
by Clarence Jay Hamilton. And in eighteen eighty two he
founded another company called the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company. Most
windmills back then were made out of wood. The derricks
were made out of wood, and the blades were made
out of wood, and they had a vein like a
tail to them that would orient the face of the
windmill into the wind. Mister Hamilton's windmill was He called
(04:53):
it the iron windmill. It was all iron and steel,
and these were used for today we think of windmills
as reducing energy, and wind the energy for electricity. No
electricity in eighteen eighty two. So this was to pump
water for stock at the farm. And so he invents
this windmill. It has a rudder instead of a tail,
(05:13):
and it has a counterbalance weight, and those two things
not only would orient the windmill into the wind, but
at different wind speeds, the blades of the windmill would
actually can't or turn a little bit as an airplane
propeller does at different speeds in order to more efficiently
turn the wind into a pumping motion energy. So the
(05:40):
Windmill Company was in business and selling the steel windmill.
They hired a salesman who would ride out about a
one hundred mile radius territory to try to sell the
windmill to farmers. At the same time, Hamilton, the inventor
of the windmill, had built a little wooden gun similar
(06:00):
to Markham's gun, and he was only selling about fifty
guns a day, much like when he produced the windmill,
when mills were all made out of wood, he made
a steel one because he thought it would be better.
He looked at the wooden Markham guns and he thought,
I can make a better one out of steel. So
he made a little steal what's now referred to as
(06:20):
a wire stock or a wire frame gun. In the
stock of the gun was just a piece of wire
been into the shape of a gun stock. And then
he realized he really didn't have the capability to produce those,
certainly not hundreds of them a day, so he took
it to the general manager of the windmill Company, a
(06:41):
man by the name of Lewis cass Huff, and he says, Louis,
I made this in my garage. I can't produce them
to the capacity I think I should have to do.
But the Windmill Company could produce this gun for us,
and this would be a good product diversification. By eighteen eight,
the time at which he made this little all steel
(07:03):
bb gun air rifle, the Windmill Company was struggling. They
realized that their windmill literally weighed a ton and that
they could only distribute in about a one one hundred
mile radius, so they're very limited in their marketing territory.
Most farmers had a windmill, so it's a better windmill,
But do you need a better windmill when you have
one that's working that's made out of wood. So they
(07:24):
actually had a board meeting in which they pulled all
the officers of the board whether or not they should
file bankruptcy, and we Daisy Manufacturing today are very thankful
that it failed by one vote, that of the general manager.
So when Clarence took this little gun to the general
manager of the Windmill Company and said we could diversify,
(07:45):
he was actually trying to save his own company also,
so mister Lewis cass Huff takes the gun, fires it
into his waistbasket. He likes it, takes it outside. He
puts a little shingle up against the stump and he
fires the b be into the shingle. It splits the shingle,
and he turns to Clarence and he wants to tell
(08:06):
him how much he likes the gun. I love having
young people in the museum and asking them, what would
you tell me if I handed you something you really
liked and you wanted to express that to me? And
they say, it's cool, that gun's cool, that gun's radical,
that gun's awesome, And I tell them we could be
the Austin Radical Sick Air Gun Company today. But the
(08:29):
colloquialism that dates back to as early as eighteen eighty
was it's a daisy. If you liked it, it's a daisy.
So there are two recordings of that statement. One is boy,
it's a daisy. One is Clarence, it's a daisy. Frankly,
I don't know that it matters, but the idea was
the gun was exceptional, he liked it. He called it
(08:50):
a daisy. And so the first guns they are embossed
with the words Plymouth Iron Windmill Co, Plymouth, Mish. Because
we used four letters back then to abbreviate states, Patton
applied for and Daisy, and Daisy was simply the name
of the gun. It wasn't the name of the company
at all.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And you're listening to Joe Murphin telling the story of
a superbrand, a real superbrand. The Daisy air Gun history
continues after these commercial messages, and we're back with our
(09:40):
American stories and our story on Daisy, the iconic manufacturer
of BB guns in America. When we last left off,
Joe Murfin the chairman of the board at the Daisy
air Gun Museum in beautiful Rogers, Arkansas. I urge anyone
who's ever in that area to visit. It's one of
the most beautiful parts of this country. He was telling
(10:02):
us about how Daisy, then a product of a windmill
company in Plymouth, Michigan, got its name. He was also
telling us about these three companies in Plymouth market manufacturing,
the aforementioned Plymouth Iron Windmill Company and the Plymouth Air
Rifle Company. Soon these three companies would come together. Let's
(10:22):
continue with the story.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's really the Daisy story of how it came to
be and how it came to be named now. The
salesman told the story some forty years later that he
personally would buy the bb guns for seventy five cents
a piece. He would take them out and run his
route with his horse and buggy, and he had a
small reproduction model of the steel windmill that he took
(10:47):
with him a sample, and when he met with a farmer,
he would offer him the windmill. He would present the
gun for two dollars apiece, trying to make his money,
but he said he was authorized to sell the gun
for a dollar if the farmer would put him up,
give him room and board for himself and his horse
in the barn over the weekend, so that he didn't
(11:08):
have to ride the one hundred miles back to his hometown.
So the company changed its name to Daisy Manufacturing in
eighteen ninety five, and Clarence Hamilton when he gave that
gun to his windmill company, because he was the one
(11:30):
that founded the windmill company and organized the local business people.
He and his son continued making Plymouth air rifle guns,
and they also then continue to make twenty two firearms,
but shortly after he gave that gun to the Plymouth
Iron Windmill Company. He said, you can have the patent
of this gun and have the rights to produce and
(11:52):
sell this gun if you remain profitable. If the company
doesn't remain profitable, I'm taking my gun back. Don't know
that he could have legally done so, but that was
the agreement they had. Well, in eighteen ninety nine, a
customer approach the Markham Company. Remember the Markham Company was
making buckets and then started making air guns. This is
(12:12):
how these companies were all in or related, and they
challenged Markham to make an air gun, but it had
to be an all steel air gun. They'd seen the
Plymouth Air Rifle air gun, so Daisy agreed to make
two guns for the Markham Company. So now they're making
guns for their competitor. One of the board members on
Markham's board had been the person to take this opportunity
(12:36):
to Daisy Manufacture and saying, you guys were making steel windmills,
you're making steel guns. You can make this gun that
we need made for our customer. Phil Markham, the founder
of the Markham Company, due to a family situation, decides
that he's going to take his small fortune and move
(12:59):
to California in nineteen twelve. By nineteen sixteen, he has
sold all of his stock to two executives at Daisy.
So two executives working for Daisy now own the majority
of stock or all of the stock in the Markham Company.
But during the Great Depression, these two executives decided that
they could no longer personally own the stock in Markham,
(13:23):
and so they sold the stock of Markham to the
Daisy Manufacturing Company. And that's how Daisy and Markham became
one company. Since Markham made their first gun in eighteen
eighty six, Daisy began saying, we've been in the air
(13:45):
gun business since eighteen eighty six. That first little gun
that Lewis Kassev shot into the shingle was made in
eighteen eighty eight, but because they required Markham, they started
using the line since eighteen eighty six. When I joined them,
I found that a bit difficult to say that we've
been in the business, and now we acquired a business
(14:06):
that's been in the business. But who was I to
change history at that point. So from eighteen eighty nine,
when Daisy made the first patented days be begun as
Plymouth Iron Windmill Company to eighteen ninety five when they
(14:26):
became Daisy Manufacturing Company. Then by nineteen fifteen we know
that the company grew exponentially. They went from one two
story building to a dozen buildings. They occupied everything in Plymouth,
Michigan between the railroad line and the switcher line, and
(14:46):
winners were tough in Michigan and still are today. Originally,
the buildings at the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company and then
the buildings at Daisy Manufacturing weren't even connected with each other.
Imagine as a manufacturer that you're doing different processes to
your products in different buildings and then you have to
(15:09):
go outside to take them to the next building. That
had to bring some challenges during the winter, I'm sure.
And of course Detroit was known, and of course Plymouth
was very close to Detroit, and they were known as
the Motortown. Motown. They were known as the headquarters of
the big three automakers for GM and Chrysler. Those were
the big companies to work for. So if you held
(15:30):
a job with Daisy and you learned the trade, and
you became a specialist at some machinery or something, then
your ultimate goal is to go to the Big three
auto workers and make more money. You could make more
money building four hundred and fifty dollars car than you
could make building a dollar and a half be begun.
(15:50):
So by nineteen fifty eight, cass Huff, who was the
grandson of Lewis cass Huff, who had said the words clearance,
it's a day now Cass is vice president of the company.
His father Edward as president. But cass is a young
man and he's on the track to become president. He's
(16:10):
been a pilot in World War Two. He flew p
thirty eights, and he builds a couple airplanes, and he
holds one of Michigan's first pilot licenses, which he got
as a teenager. So he's quite the pilot. He loves flying.
He flies all over the country. He has a job
that allows him to and requires him to fly a lot.
(16:32):
And Daisy has its own corporate airplane, and so he's
flying on a trip to the South. He stops the
refuel in Rogers, Arkansas. There's not much in Rogers, Arkansas
in nineteen fifty eight. Today we're a town approaching seventy
thousand in a metropolitan area that's much larger than that
were bordered by Bentonville Walmart's headquarters. But in nineteen fifty eight,
(16:57):
Roger was more of a of a separate small town
with six thousand people. Mister cass Huff, he comes here,
he lands at the grass strip at the airport. He
likes the people, and he announces that I would bring
my company here, but I won't land on a dirt
runway anymore. You've got to pay this runway. And the
(17:19):
city of Rogers took him seriously, and they began the
court Daisy. And so he declared he would bring his
company here, and he did. Of the seven hundred employees,
he offered all of them to keep their jobs if
they wanted to move to Arkansas. They didn't know much
about Arkansas, and people weren't as transient as we are today.
(17:39):
They didn't leave their families and their history of their
family just to go take a job somewhere. So one
hundred families took him up on the offer of moving
the Rogers and he brought him down here a few
at a time on the airplane. But imagine a town
of six thousand people and just accept my math that
that was probably fifteen hundred homes in Rogers, Arkansas, and
(18:03):
all of a sudden, you need one hundred more homes.
That's a large percentage overnight growth. And so in nineteen
fifty eight a lot of good growth happened because of
Daisy moving one hundred families here overnight. Things that make
us a superbrand, I think are multi generational. Certainly, people
(18:26):
that have a Daisy aer gun today, their parents probably
had one, their grandparents have always had one. It's the
type of thing that you hand down as a right
of passage within your family. A lot of people own
the b begun that belong to their grandfather, their great grandmother,
and they value those things and they pass it down
and therefore the brand becomes important to them. In my
(18:51):
experience with Daisy and marketing and public relations, I often
said that our brand isn't what we think it is,
it's what others think it is. And it's a very
personal thing. And that's when a brand becomes a brand,
And it's not just a logo or a name that
somebody can throw out. It's something that you have a
(19:11):
heartfelt identity with that it means something to you. So
it's the most valuable thing that the company carries on
its balance sheet. Is the goodwill of the Daisy brand name,
the historic value of it, and the part that it's
played in the heritage of our country. If you look
(19:34):
back to the days when Daisy was founded as a
windmill company in the eighteen eighties, and how the company,
how the country has changed, and how the company has
progressed over the years, that's what makes it ingrained in
people's minds.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And a terrific job by Katrina Hine collecting the audio
and the story, and a great job is always by
Monte Montgomery on the editing and the production the story
of the Daisy air Gun. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.