Remington Ammunition was founded in 1816, Brooks Brothers in 1818, and Macy’s in 1843. These are some of the oldest companies still in operation in the United States today. The founding roots of Stevens Aerospace & Defense Systems go all the way back to 1813, three years prior to Remington’s existence. The Wright brothers didn’t fly until 1903, so as you can imagine, there’s quite a bit more to Stevens’ history than is widely known in the aviation world.
According to the J.P. Stevens & Co. register, the company began in Massachusetts as Nathaniel Stevens in 1813, later changing to Nathaniel Stevens & Son in 1850 when Captain Nathaniel Stevens’ son Moses T. Stevens became a partner. The company changed its name to M.T. Stevens & Sons in 1885. At the time, John P. Stevens, Moses’ nephew, was a selling agent for M.T. Stevens & Sons, and in 1923 his company, J.P. Stevens & Co. was incorporated. In 1946, J.P. Stevens & Co. Inc. and M.T. Stevens & Sons Co. merged and kept the J.P. Stevens & Co. Inc. name. By then, J.P. Stevens was an east coast textiles powerhouse with plants up and down the eastern seaboard. The company went public that year. By 1950, they needed a flight department and the subsidiary, Stevens Aviation, was formed.
In 1975, J.P. Stevens and Co., Inc. had 82 textile plants in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The main offices remained in New York City, with administrative offices in Greenville, SC. The textile plants produced cotton, wool and synthetic yarns and fabrics and products such as towels, carpets, hosiery, glass fabrics and sheets. In 1989, the company was acquired and split into multiple companies. Stevens Aviation continued as a separate entity.
The Stevens Aerospace & Defense website describes its history in this way: Stevens Aerospace sets the standard for excellence in aircraft sales, service and management. Its rich history began in Greenville, SC, when Robert T. Stevens, then president of The J.P. Stevens Company, decided to start his own flight department. By the mid-1950s, Stevens Aerospace expanded its capabilities by pumping fuel and doing repairs on transient aircraft. The flight department quickly outgrew its hangar at the Greenville Downtown Airport, and in 1962, Stevens became the only FBO at the newly constructed Greenville-Spartanburg Airport.
The 1960s were a time of great growth for Stevens, especially once it became a Beechcraft distributor and authorized service center. By the end of the decade, they had over 100 employees and more than two dozen aircraft in their fleet. They became known as the place to have your King Air serviced.
Its services and geography continued to expand in the 1980s as it became a full-service facility offering maintenance, avionics, completions, sales and FBO services, with two additional locations added in Nashville, TN, and Dayton, OH. The company’s current ownership by Tom Foley started in 1989.
According to Bizav Media, Foley has headed up Stevens Aviation since he acquired it in 1989 as part of his share of a three-way buyout of the North Carolina textile manufacturer JP Stevens. Today’s MRO operation began as part of the flight department of JP Stevens, under the direction of the company’s chief pilot, Ralph Cuthbertson, back in the early 1950s. At the time, JP Stevens ran several Beechcraft aircraft and some of the family were pilots.
The buyout, for $1.2 billion, involved the rival, Georgia-based textile producer West Point-Pepperell, the Bibb Company, owned by Foley, and Odyssey Partners, a Wall Street investment firm.
Foley’s involvement came out of his background in private equity. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and had a stint with the consultancy firm McKinsey & Company before joining Citicorp Venture Capital. He left CVC to set up his own private equity firm, NTC Group, in 1986. Shortly after he launched NTC, Foley bought a textile firm, the Bibb Manufacturing Company, in Georgia. Initially, therefore, the buyout looked like simply a consolidation move in the textile business, with two textile companies acquiring a third, but when it came to deciding who got what with respect to the target company, Foley found himself excited by the idea of acquiring JP Stevens’ former flight department, which had branched out and was offering services to owners of aircraft outside the Stevens Group.
Over the years since acquiring and building Stevens, Foley has been quite busy. He was tasked with leading the group in charge of rebuilding Iraq’s post-war economy and infrastructure. He served as U.S. ambassador to Ireland and even dabbled in Connecticut politics, running for the U.S. Senate and the governorship in the state.
Under Foley’s command, Stevens built its massive 200,000 square foot completion and maintenance facility in Greenville, SC, in the 1990s to accommodate major expansion needs due to military contracts. This center continues today as its largest MRO and corporate office complex.
Seven years ago, Stevens launched its aircraft-on-ground (AOG) and Mobile Services group as a dedicated service division. Their AOG trucks and a crew of hand-picked “road-experienced” technicians cover the US and abroad and continue to grow with more trucks and locations every year. This fleet is utilized by OEMs, Part 91 operators, and Part 135 operators daily. In 2018, the company changed its name to Stevens Aerospace & Defense Systems after obtaining AS9110 and Military 8210.1C certifications and to reflect its expanding expertise.
In 2019, Stevens opened another facility on the east coast and announced that Christian Sasfai would become president of Stevens starting July 1. Formerly Mr. Sasfai was vice president and chief operating officer of TAC Air, and before that he was with Piedmont Hawthorne/Landmark. Sasfai worked for Stevens as director of business development and financial planning from 1995 to 2002. In addition to Mr. Sasfai’s extensive experience in aviation services, he is a pilot and certified flight instructor.
The company celebrated its 70th birthday in 2020. What started as a textile company’s flight department in 1950 has grown to provide civilian maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services for Beechcraft, Challenger, Cessna, Embraer, Global Express, Gulfstream, Falcon, Learjet, Piaggio and Pilatus aircraft. Stevens is now a U.S. and foreign government prime service provider of depot maintenance, refurbishment and modifications for military versions of general aviation airframes. Stevens Greenville is a Class III repair station that is ISO9001: 2015, AS9110C, Defence Contract Management Agency (DCMA) 8210.1C certified, EASA and DGAC certified and GFRC compliant. Stevens’ Greenville and Dayton facilities have DCMA on the field. Stevens Aerospace operates facilities in Greenville, S.C. (GYH), Dayton, Ohio (DAY), Nashville, TN (BNA), and also operates a 24/7 AOG-MRT Division.
Last year, Sasfai told Vertical magazine, “We treat every project, large or small, as though it was our own aircraft. From the day-to-day customer communication to the quality of our workmanship, we want our customer to feel like their aircraft is our only priority. I think that’s a large part of how we’ve achieved lasting success over more than 70 years.”
