Ben Rivera joined Leatherman Tool Group, celebrating its 40th anniversary, after college graduation in 1983, eight years after Tim Leatherman founded the company with the Pocket Survival Tool (PST). Rivera, who assumed the CEO role in 2018, talked with SGB Executive about the company’s expansion across the multi-tool category, the reasons for its longevity and building a corporate culture of innovation.
How did the Leatherman Tool Group get its start? Tim Leatherman inspired the brand with a need for practical fixes during a road trip across Europe in the 1970s. As he tinkered with car repairs and leaky hotel faucets, he recognized the need for a better tool with a pliers-based function. He developed a prototype, and after years of tinkering, he designed the PST, a pioneering product in the multi-tool category. The company sold its first SKU in 1983.
Is the brand known for PST today? What categories do you see as your fastest-growth products? The Wave is our best-selling multipurpose tool to date. In addition to the features of the original PST, the Wave has a diamond file, two one-handed locking knife blades, handles, inserted wire cutters, scissors, and more. We remain known for our pliers-based products, though we recently launched the Raptor, a medical shear, a go-to multi-tool for field medics, that has exceeded our expectations. Consumers find it useful not only for extracting an injured person from their vehicle and clothes but also in the kitchen for cutting bones, in the forest for trimming branches and in the garage for cutting through rigid materials, like hoses.
What has been your journey with Leatherman Tool? After graduating from Oregon State University, I joined the company as a manufacturing engineer in 1991. I think I was the seventh employee on the “office side” of the business. At the time, the backorder was around nine months. My job was to document our processes and specs, establish standards and teach everyone to work in the Leatherman way. We were intensely focused on improving quality, product performance and capacity to meet demand. The early days were fantastic fun.
Competitors decided to join the category to satisfy the demand we were struggling to meet; this forced us to up our game with continued improvements to our product and introduce products. In 1993, I was responsible for developing new products to remain competitive. The first of those was a larger and stronger tool that became the SuperTool, which launched in 1994. In 1996, we went smaller with the launch of the Micra, which has scissors as the central tool rather than pliers. Micra is our best-selling tool is our best-selling tool in volume.
I was focused on new product development in increasing levels of responsibility until 2013 when I was promoted to president and then CEO. Our product development team has grown and handles many facets, including research, product management, design, engineering, marketing, and project management. I’m still passionate about product creation and dabble with the team in a project called Leatherman Garage.
Leatherman Tool’s production has remained in Portland, OR. Do the benefits outweigh the challenges of competing with imports? Competing in a global market from Portland has been a good challenge. It’s forced us to be innovative in our products to earn patents. It’s forced us to innovate in manufacturing to have high quality and control costs. It’s forced us to be innovative in our business in general. We continuously improve to be better than our competitors or potential competitors.
Portland has great outdoor access, where our earliest brand fans and today’s consumer find endless use cases for their Leatherman tools. The city also has a maker mentality. We like to tinker, invent, test, and innovate, so it’s a natural fit for a brand as curious as ours.
Are there other factors that have helped to drive Leatherman Tool’s longevity and success? We define success in three key areas: Deliver product excellence, be a great place to work and maintain independence so that we can adhere to our values with minimal external pressure. Our commitment to quality craftsmanship has contributed to our longevity and success. Our employees are maniacally dedicated to the consumer experience, product excellence and empowering users of our products to help themselves and others. We thrive on hearing the epic tales of triumph shared through letters, stories, emails, and our warranty department. These “Tool Tales” drive us forward with inspiration and experience to improve our products, inspiring more creative problem-solving.
We have 40 years of experience in our industry, translating to more than 3,500 years of employee experience in building Leatherman Tools. Our vertical integration has also supported our success as we control every step of the manufacturing process at our factory in Portland. We conduct quality checks along the production line to test performance and ensure optimal design and durability as products reach our customers’ hands. Our tight-knit domestic manufacturing process also allows us to service customer repairs under our warranty program. Our tools are made to last, but Leatherman backs the product with our 25-year limited warranty if anything happens. Our warranty is simple, submit our online form, then send us your tool. We encourage our customers to push their tools to the limit and take pride in our ability to refurbish them, which often have deeply personal stories and sentimental value to our users. We also apply these warranty repair learnings to future designs to improve our overall user experience.
What is the key to supporting and sustaining a culture of innovation? Improvisation. When someone has an idea, we strive to enact the rule of improv to say, “Yes and…”. The goal is to build on ideas rather than crush them. It’s not easy because economic pressures and traditions sometimes feel like they get in the way. Occasionally, we must be patient.
How do you deal with copycats? We have patents to protect our products. Even so, bad actors sell copies and counterfeits online, which are hard to track down for enforcement. Our investment in quality can’t be duplicated. We design and manufacture with experience that takes decades to gain; this also can’t be duplicated.
Are you still involved in designing products? What stokes your creativity? Yes, I’m still involved in product design through our Garage project. Garage is a scout ship for Leatherman. We test the waters of new products, materials, processes, and suppliers to see if they’re suitable for the “mothership.”
I want new consumers to understand how our existing products are already relevant to them. We make efforts to educate consumers through marketing and content. That said, I get excited about developing product ideas that broaden our appeal to women, youth and people who live in the city. More people can be part of their own epic tale of triumph with a Leatherman made for them.
How is the company celebrating Leatherman Tool’s 40th anniversary? We needed to recognize our employees, who helped get us to the milestone. We kicked off our anniversary in early July with a series of employee engagement events at our headquarters in Portland, including a carnival event welcoming staff, their families and friends of the Leatherman brand.
On July 5, we launched a limited-edition anniversary tool through the Leatherman Garage, coinciding with International Leatherman Day. The Garage Batch #005: 40th Anniversary tool is our most advanced multi-tool. It was serialized in 1,983 units, a nod to our founding year and sold out in ten minutes. The tool uses our Free technology, allowing for one-handed access to all tools and features and MagnaCut steel marking an industry-first for multi-tools. It also uses spring-action pliers, a customizable bit driver, Cerakote surfaces, and user-tensioned jaws.
To honor the shared spirit of ingenuity that connects our history and future, we will also celebrate our anniversary through a content series highlighting our founding ethos and those individuals who embody the continued spirit of perseverance. The series started with a video “40 Years in the Making,” We’ll go on to showcase customer Tool Tales, employee stories and our commitment to Made in the USA manufacturing.
Photo courtesy Leatherman Tool
