James Bowen Ramsey and a small group of local investors including Charles T. Hollabird and Edwin F. French incorporated the French Battery and Carbon Company in Madison, Wisconsin in 1906 with the mundane ambition of manufacturing dry cell batteries for the flashlight market that was just beginning to develop. The company's 1910 flashlight battery sales and the 1921 registration of the Ray-O-Vac trademark established the brand identity that would persist through ownership changes, bankruptcies, and strategic pivots for the next hundred years. The 1933 patent for a wearable vacuum tube hearing aid was an early indication that the company's engineers were capable of moving beyond commodity battery production into higher-margin specialty applications. The Rayovac name was formally adopted in 1934, replacing the earlier French Battery Company identity, and the brand became one of the three major American battery companies alongside Eveready and Duracell through the mid-twentieth century. The modern Spectrum Brands emerged from the leveraged buyout era of the 1990s and early 2000s, when private equity firms assembled consumer product portfolios by acquiring brands that were either undervalued within conglomerates or struggling as independent businesses. Remington Products joined in 2003, United Industries and Tetra in 2005, and Russell Hobbs in 2010 — each acquisition adding a brand portfolio but also adding debt. The Hardware & Home Improvement segment was acquired from Stanley Black & Decker in 2012 for approximately $1.4 billion, adding the Baldwin, Kwikset, and Pfister brands. The 2009 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing was the consequence of the acquisition-era debt load meeting the 2008-2009 credit contraction. The restructuring cleared the balance sheet and allowed the company to emerge in 2010 as a public company with a cleaner capital structure — though the strategic pattern of acquisition-driven growth resumed afterward, setting up the divestiture cycle that David Maura has been executing since 2018.