Leatherman
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Manufacturing |
| Founded | July 1983 |
| Headquarters | Portland, Oregon, USA |
|
Key people
|
Timothy S. Leatherman (Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder) Steve Berliner (Secretary/Treasurer and Co-Founder) Benjamin Rivera (President/CEO) |
| Products |
Multi-tools Folding knives |
|
Number of employees
|
525 |
| Website | leatherman.com |
Leatherman is a brand of multitools and knives made by Leatherman Tool Group of Portland, Oregon, US. The company was founded in July 1983 by Timothy S. Leatherman and Steve Berliner in order to market his idea of a capable, easily portable hand tool with multiple functions. That same year Leatherman sold the first multitool, which was called the PST (Pocket Survival Tool).
Timothy S. Leatherman, a 1970 mechanical engineering graduate of Oregon State University, and his business partner, Steve Berliner, formed Leatherman Tool Group in 1983.
Leatherman was inspired to design a "Boy Scout knife with pliers" while he and his wife traveled Europe and the Middle East in 1975, often attempting to use a simple pocketknife to repair their repeatedly malfunctioning car and leaky hotel plumbing. He spent several years perfecting the "Mr. Crunch" prototype and received his first U.S. patent (4,238,862) in 1980. After additional refinement, Leatherman’s first product was introduced in 1983 as the Pocket Survival Tool (PST) and initially sold through Early Winters and Cabela’s mail-order catalogs.
Leatherman sold nearly 30,000 tools in 1984, fueling additional product development and both rapid company growth as well as manufacturing capacity. By the end of 2001, the company had sales of $100 million annually and had sold more than 20 million tools.
Almost ten percent of the manufacturing facility area is concerned with the repairing and rebuilding of any tool that needs it, either domestically, or sent from distributors from around the world. Their system is to replace and return any tool sent in with an equivalent item, reducing the time the owner is without the tool, unless they request the same physical tool due to sentimental reasons.
In 2007 the company opened its first retail store, located at its manufacturing facility, that has since relocated to a retail store at the Cascade Station shopping center near the facility and Cascades MAX Station in Northeast Portland. The same year, Tim Leatherman was inducted into the Blade magazine Cutlery Hall of Fame in recognition of his design impact on the cutlery history.
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Wikipedia