Seattle-Tacoma Box Company
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Formerly called
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| Corporation | |
| Industry | Wood products |
| Founded | October 21, 1889 |
| Founder | Jacob Nist |
| Headquarters | Seattle (Kent), Washington, USA |
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Area served
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International |
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Key people
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Ferdinand Nist, President |
| Products | Containers, boxes, crates |
| Brands | PerfectioNIST |
| Website | Seattle-Tacoma Box Company |
Seattle-Tacoma Box Company is a pioneering Seattle company established in 1889 by Jacob Nist and sons as "Queen City Box Manufacturing Company." For over a century, the Nist family has continuously owned, managed, and operated the company, producing wooden crates, boxes, containers and other wood products. Renamed "Seattle Box Company" in 1905, the business purchased a second manufacturing facility in Tacoma in 1922.
The two enterprises merged efforts in 1975 as "Seattle-Tacoma Box Company," opening a new plant in Kent, Washington. Governor Booth Gardner honored the Nist family and the company on its centennial in 1989, proclaiming the pride of the citizens of Washington for the company's "contributions to the economy of the state". In addition to wooden boxes and crates, today the company produces packaging supplies, bags, strapping, pallets, fuel pellets, portable moving and storage vaults, and seafood containers.
Jacob Nist, a farmer and grocer from Philadelphia, migrated to Seattle with his wife and seven children by 1880, and initially took up farming. He and his sons soon found work in the lumber mills. Nist worked for three years as a turner at the Stetson-Post Mill Company in Seattle, and his sons found employment as carpenters and mill engineers. By 1888, Nist and his sons Michael, Jacob J., George, and Aloys were all working at the Seattle Lumber and Commercial Company, which was operating 20 hours per day, and had added a new box factory. That mill was destroyed on June 6, 1889, in the Great Seattle Fire, along with every other mill and wharf between Union and Jackson streets, as well as most of downtown Seattle.
To continue providing for the family after the fire, Nist and sons established the Queen City Box Manufacturing company and began production in October 1889. The original Queen City Manufacturing facility was next to the Nist family home on the shore of Lake Union. The company started slowly, and according to the Seattle City Directory three of Nist's sons, Michael, Jacob J., and John were also employed in 1890 by Skookum Manufacturing Company, another local sawmill. The company made millwork, sashes and door frames. The Nists incorporated the company two years into production, in November 1891, with $10,000 capital, 100 shares at $100 each. The company objectives were to "manufacture, buy, sell and deal in all kinds of lumber, sashes, doors, window blinds, molding, stairs, stair rails and banisters, and all kinds of woodwork and finishing material−to operate sawmills, sash and door factories, shingle mills, box factories, and to build houses, deal in timber and own land."
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Wikipedia