1. Company & Brand Snapshot WORX is the consumer-facing brand of Positec Tool Corporation, a manufacturing conglomerate founded in Suzhou, China, in 1994 by Don Gao. The brand itself launched in 2007 with its flagship product, the Worx GT Trimmer — a lightweight, innovative take on the humble string trimmer that established the brand’s DNA:…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot WEN Products is a study in American tool industry longevity with a distinctly modern identity crisis. Founded in 1951 by Nick Anton, the company helped pioneer the transition from manual tools to electric power tools—specifically credited with pioneering the electric soldering gun and electric jigsaw. For a generation of Americans,…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot Skil is a brand living on borrowed time and reinvented purpose. Founded in 1926 and headquartered in Naperville, Illinois, Skil traces its lineage to Edmond Michel’s 1924 invention of the portable electric handsaw — a genuine watershed moment in construction history [report data]. The company that gave the world the…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot Ryobi’s story is a classic Japanese industrial arc with a distinctly American second act. Founded in December 1943 by Yutaka Urakami in Fuchu, Hiroshima, the company began as Ryobi Seisakusho Co., Ltd., selling die-cast products by 1944. The company’s early decades were defined by precision manufacturing—aluminum die-casting—which remains a core…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot RIDGID is a study in dual identities. Founded in 1923 in North Ridgeville, Ohio, as the Ridge Tool Company, the brand invented the modern pipe wrench and spent its first four decades building an unassailable reputation in the plumbing, pipe fitting, and HVAC trades. In 1966, it became a wholly…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot Milwaukee Tool is not a startup story, and it’s not a tech-disruption story. It’s a century-old manufacturing company that executed one of the most successful brand reinventions in the power tool industry. Founded in 1924 by tool and die maker A.H. Petersen in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the company began with a…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot Metabo—short for Metallbohrdreher, the German term for the metal drill that founder Albert Schnizler first built in 1923—is one of the oldest names in power tools. The company was formally founded in the 1920s and has been headquartered in Nürtingen, Germany, ever since, where it claims to have been “developing…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot Makita Corporation is one of the oldest and most respected names in the power tool industry, with a history that predates most of its competitors by decades. Founded on March 21, 1915, by Mosaburo Makita in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan, the company began as Makita Electric Works, an electric motor sales…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot Kobalt is not a standalone company; it is a private-label brand wholly owned by Lowe’s, the second-largest home improvement retailer in the United States. Founded in 1998 via a partnership between Lowe’s and J.H. Williams Tool Group, the brand was created with a straightforward promise: give DIYers and homeowners reliable…
1. Company & Brand Snapshot Husqvarna is not a startup, and it’s not a legacy brand resting on laurels—it’s a 337-year-old Swedish industrial institution that has reinvented itself more times than most companies have existed. Founded in 1689 in the town of Huskvarna, Sweden, as a firearms manufacturer, Husqvarna is one of the oldest continuously…
