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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Tools |
| Founded | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (1978) |
| Founder | Leonard Lee |
| Headquarters | , Canada |
Number of locations | 20 |
Area served | Canada |
Key people | Robin Lee, CEO and Jason Tasse, President & COO |
| Products | Woodworking and Gardening Tools |
| Website | http://www.leevalley.com/ |
Lee Valley Tools Ltd. is a Canadian business specializing in tools and gifts for woodworking and gardening.
The company is family-owned. The founder, Leonard Lee, was a recipient of the Order of Canada. He founded the company in 1978, in Ottawa, Ontario. Over the next ten years, the company opened several more stores in Toronto and Vancouver, and started manufacturing its own line of tools (starting with the Veritas Dovetail Marker in 1982). Since then, it has continued opening stores, manufacturing more diverse tools, and selling through mail order and the internet. In 1998, Canica Design was launched. Canica is a medical design company associated with Lee Valley Tools [1] which arose out of consultations between Leonard Lee and surgeon Michael Bell after Lee found that Bell was using Lee Valley tools in his plastic surgery practice.
Lee Valley Tools is notable for enforcing and codifying the concept of “pay slope” [2] limiting the pay at the highest levels in the company based on what the lowest paid employees earn. They earned a slot in the Forbes Top 500 Employers list in 2018. [3]
The primary business is mail-order and retail, purveying mainly woodworking and gardening tools and equipment, as well as woodworking hardware and gifts. The consumer part of the business runs under the main company name, Lee Valley Tools.
Lee Valley also has a manufacturing arm, called Veritas Tools. Veritas makes many woodworking hand-tools, including hand planes, marking gauges and other measuring tools, router tables, sharpening systems, and numerous other gadgets. Veritas does research and development activities for the factory line, and has developed and patented many innovative designs.[ citation needed ]
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores.
Sears Canada Inc. was a publicly-traded Canadian company affiliated with the American-based Sears department store chain. In operation from 1952 until January 14, 2018, and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the company began as Simpsons-Sears—a joint venture between the Canadian Simpsons department store chain and the American Sears chain—which operated a national mail order business and co-branded Simpsons-Sears stores modelled after those of Sears in the U.S. After the Hudson's Bay Company purchased Simpsons in 1978, the joint venture was dismantled and Hudson's Bay sold its shares in the joint venture to Sears; with Sears now fully owning the company, it was renamed Sears Canada Inc. in 1984. In 1999, Sears Canada acquired the remaining assets and locations of the historic Canadian chain Eaton's. From 2014, Sears Holdings owned a 10% share in the company. ESL Investments was the largest shareholder of Sears Canada.
Loblaw Companies Limited is a Canadian retailer encompassing corporate and franchise supermarkets operating under 22 regional and market-segment banners, as well as pharmacies, banking and apparel. Loblaw operates a private label program that includes grocery and household items, clothing, baby products, pharmaceuticals, cellular phones, general merchandise and financial services. Loblaw is the largest Canadian food retailer, and its brands include President's Choice, No Name and Joe Fresh. It is controlled by George Weston Limited, a holding company controlled by the Weston family; Galen G. Weston, is the chair of the Loblaw board of directors, as well as chair of the board of directors and CEO of Canada-based holding company George Weston.
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood using muscle power to force the cutting blade over the wood surface. Some rotary power planers are motorized power tools used for the same types of larger tasks, but are unsuitable for fine-scale planing, where a miniature hand plane is used.
Spencer Gifts LLC, doing business as Spencer's, is a North American mall retailer with over 600 stores in the United States and Canada. Its stores specialize in novelty and gag gifts, and also sell clothing, band merchandise, sex toys, room decor, collectible figures, fashion and body jewelry, fantasy and horror items. The company also owns and operates a pop-up seasonal retailer, Spirit Halloween.
Tractor Supply Company, founded in 1938, is an American retail chain of stores that sells products for home improvement, agriculture, lawn and garden maintenance, livestock, equine and pet care for recreational farmers and ranchers, pet owners, and landowners. The company has 2,000 stores and is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee. It is publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol TSCO and is a Fortune 500 company.
ZARA is a Spanish multi-national retail clothing chain. It specialises in fast fashion, and sells clothing, accessories, shoes, beauty products and perfumes. The head office is in Arteixo, in A Coruña in Galicia. It is the largest constituent company of the Inditex group. In 2020 it was launching over twenty new product lines per year.
Mail order is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote methods such as:
Harbor Freight Tools, commonly referred to as Harbor Freight, is a privately held tool and equipment retailer, headquartered in Calabasas, California, United States. It operates a chain of retail stores, as well as an e-commerce business. The company employs over 26,000 people in the United States, and has over 1,400 locations in 48 states.
Leonard G. Lee CM was a Canadian entrepreneur and founder of Lee Valley Tools and Canica Design. Lee was born in 1938 in Wadena, Sask., and grew up in a log cabin without electricity or running water.
DeWalt Industrial Tool Company is an American worldwide manufacturer of power tools and hand tools for the construction, manufacturing and woodworking industries, as well as home craftspeople. DeWalt is a registered trademark of Black & Decker (U.S.) Inc., a subsidiary of Stanley Black & Decker.
The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Marysville, Ohio, where O.M. Scott began selling lawn seed in 1868. The company manufactures and sells consumer lawn, garden and pest control products, and soilless indoor gardening equipment. In the U.S., the company manufactures Scotts, Miracle-Gro and Ortho brands. The company also markets consumer Roundup.
A surform tool features perforated sheet metal and resembles a food grater. A surform tool consists of a steel strip with holes punched out and the rim of each hole sharpened to form a cutting edge. The strip is mounted in a carriage or handle. Surform tools were called "cheese graters" decades before they entered the market as kitchen utensils used to grate cheese. Surform planes have been described as a cross between a rasp and a plane.
Edward Preston & Sons is a tool manufacturer based in Birmingham, England.
Joe Fresh is a Canadian fashion brand and retail chain created by designer Joe Mimran for Canadian food distributor Loblaw Companies Limited. It was formed in 2006. The label includes adult and children's wear, shoes, handbags, jewelry, beauty products, and bath items.
Gray Tools is a Canadian professional tool company based in Brampton, Ontario. Founded in 1912 by Alex Gray (1883-1969), Gray Tools is Canada's largest professional tool manufacturing company, with 4000 industrial products available.
Footprint Tools is a hand tool manufacturer based in Sheffield, England. In 2014 most of their hand tools are still made in Sheffield at the Footprint factory.
The Positec Tool Corporation, or simply Positec, is a manufacturing company that specializes in the production of power tools and lawn and garden equipment. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Suzhou, China and the head of its North American division is located in Charlotte, North Carolina. Positec is known for its production of the Rockwell Tools, WORX and Kress brands which can be found in retailers like Lowe's, The Home Depot, Costco, and Walmart.
Rockwell Tools is a line of power tools that is currently owned and distributed by Positec Tool Corporation, a China-based company with North American headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. The brand offers power tools and hand tools that are most often used in professional and private construction, automotive repair, and woodworking. Its products are sold at a variety of retailers including Lowe's, Costco, and The Home Depot.
Garrett Wade is a family-owned business, established in 1975 and based in DUMBO, Brooklyn and Cincinnati, Ohio. It sources and sells a range of high quality hand tools, primarily for woodworking, gardening, and outdoor work, based on traditional designs. It is best known for its tools used for woodworking. Garry Chinn is the founder and CEO of Garrett Wade.
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