The First Decade

On April 9, 1935, a certificate of incorporation for Ohio Band Instrument Co. was signed and notarized in New York City, then filed three days later with the New York Department of State's office in Albany. The articles of incorporation were signed by three individuals who appear to have been associated with Theodore S. Wood, attorney-at-law, presumably on behalf of Scherl & Roth. These individuals acted as legal caretakers of the company until a formal board of directors could be elected, which happened by the beginning of December. Ohio Band was officially incorporated as a New York-based business.

United States trademark documentation indicates that the Reynolds name was first used for commerce in February 1936. If commercial operations had begun any earlier than that (having incorporated three months earlier), there is no documented record of where or by whom instruments may have been manufactured and sold. It is also possible that February represents the date that the Reynolds name was free to be used for commerce—meaning he no longer was associated with H.N. White Co. There is no record of when Reynolds officially left White, but it likely was between November 1935 and February 1936.

On March 20, 1936, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the "recently organized" F.A. Reynolds Co. had secured a 10-year lease for a "modern three-story brick building" with 21,000 square feet of floor space near the heart of Cleveland. Foster Reynolds told the newspaper that the location was selected "because of manufacturing conditions, nearness to supply of raw materials and convenience of distribution of the finished product." The new company, located at 2837-53 Prospect Avenue, was just over a mile from the central railway terminal in Cleveland and about two miles away from the H.N. White factory where Reynolds had spent most of his career.

A 10-year/20,000 square feet lease in the same factory building had been signed in 1935 by an automotive supply maker for $36,000. It is assumed that Reynolds closed at similar terms.

Startup expenses of $76,000 in 1936 is equivalent to approximately $1.4M in 2022. It's unknown if financing for the lease and equipment was provided through the partnership with Scherl & Roth, or (as R. Dale Olson speculates) as a collateral loan through a more conventional source, such as Reynolds' banker, Donald M. Agard of Central National Bank [Zig Kanstul, pp.117-118]. Agard's son, Don, would later work for Foster Reynolds, both in Cleveland and later in California at the F.E. Olds plant.

The company updated its records with the State of Ohio to reflect the new business address on April 13, 1936. The filing document indicates that the update had been approved by the Reynolds board of directors on December 2, 1935 and was signed by Foster A. Reynolds, president, and Max Scherl, secretary. Plans for the new operations were well underway.

With the factory location established, Reynolds, Roth and Scherl now decided that Ohio Band Instrument Co. should be based in Ohio rather than New York—perhaps for tax or trade advantages, but more likely in anticipation of Roth and Scherl moving their own business to Cleveland and becoming Ohio residents (New York law would have required one of the owners of Ohio Band or a new legal agent to remain a New York resident).

Articles of incorporation for a new company were drafted on June 30, signed by Foster Reynolds, Max Scherl and now, Harper Reynolds, Foster's younger brother. The articles were identical to that of F.A. Reynolds Co., organized a year earlier. Foster Reynolds was named the legal representative of the new Ohio Band and he filed the articles of incorporation with the Ohio Secretary of State on August 27. This second incorporation was reported in the Cleveland Plains Dealer the following day.

In the interim, on July 14, the New York Department of State confirmed receipt of a certificate of dissolution for the original Ohio Band Instrument Co. That company surrendered its Ohio business license on August 7 (prior to new articles of incorporation being filed), and by September 10, any tax liabilities had been cleared, leaving the new Ohio-based version of the company free to operate.

Early operations at the Reynolds factory were not without incident. In January 1937, a gas explosion in the boiler room was reported that blew the roof off and injured three workers, including a janitor who was blown from the boiler room into the basement and two workers who "suffered lacerations and bruises when the blast threw them into piles of band instruments." All three were reported to be in good condition. [Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 31, 1937]

Once operations at the Prospect Avenue factory were up and running, Scherl & Roth relocated their business from New York to Cleveland, bringing Heinrich Roth and Max Scherl into closer contact with Foster Reynolds. Much closer in fact, as Scherl & Roth shared office space with the Reynolds company from 1937 until 1953-54 when they moved into a new location on Superior Avenue (the Reynolds factory continued to operate on Prospect Avenue).

The business relationships between the three men were closely interwoven, both as officers of the companies and in the products that they offered. In 1936, Foster Reynolds is listed as president of F.A. Reynolds in the Cleveland City Directory; his brother, Harper, is listed as treasurer. In 1938, 1942 and 1944, Heinrich Roth is added as vice president and Max Scherl as secretary. The 1940 directory has no officers listed in the entry, but presumably would be the same organizational structure.

In July, Foster Reynolds exhibited a complete line of Regent and Reynolds band instruments at the NAMM convention (New York, July 26–29). The annual convention regularly alternated between Chicago and New York. By that time, Ohio Band offered a full catalog of The Regent brass and woodwind instruments and band accessories, including stands, mutes, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. exclusively to dealers, a business model that Foster Reynolds was well familiar with from his work with H.N. White's Cleveland Band and American Standard divisions, and that Scherl & Roth had cultivated themselves for decades.

Scherl & Roth imported Moennig Bros. and other woodwind instruments that were resold, first by Ohio Band and then as part of the Roth-Reynolds catalog in the 1950s. It seems reasonable to conclude that the two companies were working closely together, through subsidiaries and imports, to create an integrated product catalog for student bands and orchestras, while also focusing on their specific areas of expertise—F.A. Reynolds on professional brass instruments, Scherl & Roth on premium violins.