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| Company background |
Ball-points, Fold-ups, and Worldwide Dominion
That Remarkable,
Funny Little Tool
Bondhus builds a useful little tool. Like most really useful things it’s simple. And like many simple innovations (the hammer, the Swiss Army Knife, moveable type), the line of Bondhus® ball-point hex tools turned out to be a revolutionary product with almost unlimited potential, spawning a host of imitators. Yet even with some 70 competitors worldwide, no one seriously disputes the overwhelming dominance of the Bondhus Corporation in the world of ball-point hex tools. The company boasts more than half the worldwide market share; its closest competitor claims no more than perhaps 15 percent. But John Bondhus, president and founder of the $20 million company, isn’t satisfied.
"The Driving Force of Bondhus Corporation," according to the company’s 1997 Strategy Statement, "is the attainment of dominant worldwide market share of selected, highest quality, non-powered fastener tools."
To a certain extent, the company is already there. That useful little tool turns up everywhere. It can be found in tool boxes around the globe, on every continent and in dozens of nations from Taiwan to Venezuela, from Sweden to Japan. Machinists and automotive repair shops find it indispensable. U.S. Army tank commanders used it during the Gulf War. Printing press operators use it in Singapore, South Dakota, and Syria. So do dentists and the makers of artificial limbs. It’s used to open certain tamper-proof pay phone coin boxes. General Motors builds cars with it. Bicycle repair kits almost everywhere contain some version of the tool. Jazz, rock, and pop musicians who play Fender guitars use it, too.
Clearly, this tool is something special. That it’s the best tool of its kind anywhere on the planet is an article of faith at the Bondhus Corporation; and that faith is built on a foundation of product testing combined with user satisfaction and loyalty. Bondhus® tools are handier, easier to use, more durable, more versatile than competing tools. Bondhus uses better steel, better manufacturing techniques, and better design than the competition. In torque tests, just one of several means of testing tools, Bondhus consistently beats its competitors by a large margin. Still, as John Bondhus points out: "We know we’ve got the best product on the market. But just being the best doesn’t make it something that people want right away. There’s always some resistance to good new ideas. We believe that through intensive focus and teamwork we’ll retain and increase our world market share."
A newspaper publisher in the small town of Monticello, Minnesota, where the Bondhus Corporation conducts its worldwide operations, wrote about the company in one of his very first news stories in the late 1960s. He described John Bondhus as the "ingenious" inventor of a novel ball-point screwdriver, "useful in tight locations or in assembly operations." He wrote about the development of the tool and hinted at future greatness for the small, entrepreneurial local company that would grow to become the Bondhus Corporation: "Hidden behind the unpretentiousness of high curtains and the seclusion of a low over-hanging canvas awning on Monticello’s main street, the production of small tools which are distributed on a nationwide basis thrives, without the knowledge of many local people." By that time already, just five years after the invention and initial tentative sales of the Bondhus® tool, the writer told of "unsolicited word-of-mouth contacts" leading to the first international orders from Venezuela and Japan. "Bondhus’ company," he wrote, "is currently the only firm in the United States producing this tool."
After 30-odd years of writing and publishing stories about Bondhus in the weekly Monticello Times – covering company expansions, awards, worldwide growth, and contributions to the community – the publisher now speaks with undiminished awe and admiration of "this remarkable company" and "this remarkable entrepreneurial man, John Bondhus."
Bondhus® employees seem to share the newspaper publisher’s view of their company and its founder. From top officers to sales, office, and production staff, nearly all speak effusively when describing their work and their company, often punctuating a conversation with words like enthusiasm, happiness, gratitude, challenge, cooperation, love, quality, loyalty, pride, excitement, remarkable, great. The Bondhus® experience seems to inspire such exuberance among the company’s employees that an outsider is left astonished and a little bewildered. How is it that this funny little tool can inspire such passion?
Diane Fales, who has been with the company practically from the start, smiles and explains the whole thing. "That funny little tool," she says, "has paid my wages for a long, long time."
From Balldriver L-wrench to GorillaGrip fold-up*:
The Vision and the Focus
The Bondhus® story is best understood in terms of broad vision and pin-point, laser-like focus. If that seems contradictory, it’s because the Bondhus Corporation is in some ways a contradictory company, just as its founder sometimes seems like a walking contradiction. Independent and occasionally contrarian, John Bondhus paved his own route to success, often flouting conventional business wisdom and writing his own imaginative and creative new rules.
*Balldriver® and GorillaGrip® are trademarks of Bondhus Corporation.
People who know him – from the chairman of the Bondhus® board of directors to company employees and business associates – describe the man as a "visionary," a "philosopher," a man of "brilliance and creativity." Yet John Bondhus is today essentially what he always has been: a solitary, small-town guy who likes to study fish when he’s not building a product that’s about as basic and fundamental as anything can be. Associates speak of his humility, his accessibility, his kindness, generosity, and compassion. Yet the man speaks freely of his quest for worldwide dominion and his "tendency to think only in terms of the international market." John Bondhus brings to the table the broadest possible perspective, a vision that encompasses the planet. This broad vision springs from a single, narrowly focused idea: "Our strategy," he says, "is to focus on one product, just one, and perfect it to the point where we have the very best quality and the best price in the world. That’s how you build market share. That’s how you build customer loyalty. The key for us is focus. It’s the dilution of efforts that makes you less successful."
While the prevailing trend among tool companies is to increase and broaden product lines to achieve distribution efficiency, Bondhus runs doggedly in the other direction, focusing its efforts on the one or two things it does better than anyone else. For more than 30 years, that has meant focusing on the ball-point tools that John Bondhus started manufacturing in a tiny Monticello machine shop in 1964. This commitment to the concept of a narrow, pin-point focus represents the Bondhus Corporation’s earliest corporate philosophy. Like so many other successful businesses, Bondhus began as a single, simple, bright idea. When John Bondhus was a boy, his father tinkered with the notion of a ball-point hex tool, and in fact made a few of them in his machine shop for his own use. But it was left to John, the eldest of 13 Bondhus children, to grasp the full potential of his father’s invention and to develop it into a thriving, international business. In 1964, with little money and few prospects, John entered the manufacturing business with a single product. His first-year sales totaled $2,000. By 1997, worldwide sales were projected to reach nearly $20 million; do the math and you come up with a 10,000-fold increase in annual sales volume.
In his 1997 Executive Summary of the company’s performance and prospects, John Bondhus summed up the issue of focus: "It was easy to have a focused ‘narrow’ line when we started. That was all we had or could afford. We simply made the best of it. That narrow focus resulted in rapid compound growth financed by exceptional profits. This success resulted in getting us to the point where we enjoy the largest world market share for ball-point tools with one of the highest gross profit margins in our industry. In the last few years, we strayed from our original path and experimented with broadening our line both with new internally developed products, as well as marketing products for other manufacturers, and we were not successful. [But] we are now in a position to really focus on what we do best – making and selling Bondhus® hex tools."
This commitment to focus distinguishes the Bondhus Corporation from its competitors. While nearly every other tool company has succumbed to the tremendous pressure exerted by distributors and customers to expand and broaden their product lines, Bondhus has, with rare and occasionally disappointing exceptions, stuck to the original course. On those few occasions when for various reasons Bondhus ventured away from its narrow focus, the results were usually less than completely satisfying, says manufacturing manager Mike Blackston. Unfocused efforts "just didn’t work all that well. They took our attention away from our primary product line." In the end, most such experiments were scrapped. "We sold a modest amount," Mike Blackston says, "but nothing ever resulted in revolutionary, huge sales growth."
For more than 30 years Bondhus has made and sold the hex ball-point L-wrenches more successfully than anyone else. The company tweaked its primary product line, to be sure, improving the quality of the steel, finding innovative new designs for the basic tools, reducing the costs – first for the company and ultimately, therefore, for the customer – of manufacturing, sales, and distribution. As the company grew and claimed dominance of its narrowly-defined market, the company perceived just one external threat to its continuing success: that one or more of its competitors might catch up to Bondhus in cost reduction or customer preference for the Bondhus® ball-point line. But for 30-plus years, Bondhus has stayed several steps ahead of the competition. No one has caught up. No one is even close to catching up. The most important reason, Mike Blackston suggests, is that "every comparison" to competing products "confirms that our product is the best in the world."
The perceived threat still looms, though, and Bondhus isn’t taking any chances in the competition for market share. The recent introduction of a new fold-up hex key line, for example, demonstrates the company’s strong determination to dominate its niche. Within the company, there is growing excitement about this latest addition to the Bondhus® line. The aptly named "GorillaGrip® " fold-up tools, like the ball-point tools, represent another one of those seemingly simple, but really revolutionary new ideas. Everyone expects that the GorillaGrip® fold-up tools – sometimes described as "a kind of Swiss Army knife" among hex tools – will accomplish in the future what the ball-point L-wrenches and screwdrivers did during the company’s first three decades. "We did it once with the ball-points," says John Yngve, chairman of the Bondhus® board of directors, "and now we’re going to do it again with the fold-ups."
Bondhus is a relative late-comer to the world of fold-up hex tools. There are plenty of others on the market, and it’s clear that Bondhus has some catching-up to do. But no one at the company seriously doubts that the GorillaGrip® fold-up tool is destined for greatness.
There are good reasons for this confidence. For example, the steel used in all of the Bondhus® tools is up to 20 percent stronger than the steel used by competitors. Over the years, Bondhus has developed unique manufacturing processes that ensure the highest standards of quality control in the industry. That much has long been well-established. But the GorillaGrip® fold-up tool is special, even by the high standards set by the Bondhus Corporation. Its comfortable, attractive, one-piece space age composite handle is demonstrably stronger and more durable than any of the various metal, plastic, or die-cast handles used by some other fold-up tools. In recent head-to-head testing against competing tools at trade shows, participants have been invited to try to damage the new fold-up tools. So far they’ve failed: they couldn’t bend, break, or shatter them into pieces the way they did with competing fold-up tools. And in scientific torque testing, the new fold-up handle survives 43 percent more torque than the two-part plastic handle used by one competing tool and 35 percent more torque than a one-piece stamped metal handle used by another.
"The new fold-up tools are our biggest opportunity today for growth and future profits," John Bondhus says. "We have the best designed fold-up in the world today....We must do whatever it takes to become a dominant world leader in fold-up tools within the next five years."
Introduced in 1996, the GorillaGrip® fold-up already has become "phenomenally successful," says manufacturing manager Mike Blackston. In its first nine months on the market, this new fold-up generated more than twice the sales that the previous new Bondhus® product was able to generate in its first 12 months. John Bondhus believes the new fold-up has tremendous sales potential – he predicts extremely rapid sales growth for its first five to ten years, reaching perhaps as much as $30 million in annual sales – if his marketing, sales, and distribution network can get the tool into the hands of the men and women who will use it. "People who use the GorillaGrip® fold-up like it," he says. "And they continue to like it. If we can get it into their hands, they’ll buy it."
The evidence suggests that he’s right. At demonstrations around the globe, customer response to the GorillaGrip® fold-up verges on amazement. At several recent trade shows, potential customers have been queuing up in long lines to see, handle, and try out the tool, obstructing neighboring booths and causing consternation among other exhibitors and amusement in the Bondhus® booth. Initial skepticism swiftly gives way to astonishment. With its architectural, form-fitting, color-coded handle, the tool looks and feels like nothing else on the market. Accustomed to putting heavy metallic-looking things in their tool boxes, customers often look askance at the light-weight, almost fluorescent, space-age composite material in the new fold-up handles. In startling shades of yellow, red, orange, and green, these tools look, some say, "like a toy." People often have a hard time believing that this unique grip material actually is, as advertised, "stronger than steel." But it is. And if you don’t believe it, the Bondhus® Corporation will prove it, and then you will believe it. "That’s the battle we have to fight," John Bondhus says. "And we’re winning. If we can get you to pick it up, just once, and hold it and use it, you’re sold."
Voiding The Four Big D-Words
The GorillaGrip® fold-up story offers a glimpse at how the Bondhus Corporation does business, how it conducts its research and development, and how it successfully focuses its corporate efforts and assets. More broadly, and more importantly, the new fold-up story reveals something essential about the unique corporate philosophy and management style that have evolved at the Bondhus Corporation.
Getting the new fold-up tool to market "was kind of a gut-wrenching process," Mike Blackston recalls. The Bondhus Corporation gave its new fold-up design team the resources – the people, the money, the support, the time – it needed to develop the new product quickly and effectively. Headed by Blackston and Rebecca Oslund, the multi-disciplinary team began working on the fold-up concept in mid-1994, and by February 1996 (just 18 months after work started) the first 100,000 GorillaGrip® fold-up tools rolled out of the plant. Along the way, Blackston says, the project became "the focus of the entire company." Suggestions came from many people. Employees in every department, as well as distributors and importers around the world, were welcome to contribute ideas; and many of them did. "It was a little stressful," Blackston admits." "We had to do a lot of things concurrently." During the nerve-wracking months of product development, the new fold-up went through not just dozens, but hundreds of changes and improvements. Everything about the new tool was subject to intense scrutiny and modification – from designing handle shapes and selecting materials to choosing a packaging design, from generating marketing ideas to setting sales goals, from testing the tool to running focus groups. Even the GorillaGrip® fold-up’s distinctive name was open for comments and suggestions. As Mike Blackston says: "We resisted the urge to compromise."
In that quick outline, the GorillaGrip® fold-up story reads much like the story of countless other new products. But it also gives a hint of something deeper about the Bondhus® management style, a corporate theory based on total employee involvement and participation. "My management philosophy is to motivate people by letting them do the things that they want to do," John Bondhus says. "We’re very committed to our employees and to the idea of an open, participative style."
There is an old stereotype about manufacturing jobs. It originated in the factories and sweatshops of the Industrial Revolution and persists to this day in something like the following form: to work in manufacturing is to work under grim and unpleasant conditions, characterized by Four Big D-Words –Dark, Dirty, Dangerous, and Dead-End. It’s an unfortunate stereotype because – even in this high-tech, information-driven, knowledge-based, service-oriented age – it’s still too often true. But not at Bondhus: "It’s always been clean and bright and very safe," says Diane Fales. On-the-job injuries are virtually non-existent. Bondhus pays close attention to environmental safety and security, meeting (and nearly always exceeding) all applicable safety and health regulations, and taking pride in its utilization of environmentally friendly manufacturing processes and materials. Absenteeism is not a problem. Yearly employee surveys consistently indicate that workers rank their morale, job satisfaction, and security at high levels. This is true in part because Bondhus long ago implemented a policy of stable employment, good pay and benefits, and an unusually generous profit-sharing program.
But John Bondhus believes there’s more to employee satisfaction – and performance – than job security, good pay, and a clean, well-lighted place to work. Material rewards can help, but won’t necessarily inspire people to reach their full potential or give any lasting sense of personal fulfillment. Avoiding that fourth Big D-Word – Dead-End – requires something just as important and far less tangible than money.
In its statement of corporate philosophy, the company declares: "We believe that people are born with a natural desire to be productive." To the greatest extent possible, Bondhus organizes its affairs according to that principle. John Bondhus has created a corporate culture in which creativity and innovation can thrive and an employee’s "natural desire to be productive" can be indulged.
The company welcomes and encourages employee participation at all levels as, for example, it sought employee input for the new fold-up development project. The company also advocates constant educational activity and career development for its employees. Bondhus conducts regular in-house seminars on subjects related to career development and personal growth. The company pays the costs for outside job-related courses and offers paid time off for any employee who wishes to enroll. To encourage a broadening of job skills, employees may request and receive extensive in-house training in a company-related project of their choice. For example, a receptionist might wish to take sales training, a salesperson might want to learn more about the manufacturing process, or a machinist might seek management skills training. Bondhus rewards that kind of employee initiative. Cross-training is encouraged. Promotions, whenever possible, come from within the company.
"John is always stretching and pushing people to be their best," Diane Fales says. "You don’t get stagnant around here. There’s always something new. I just can’t imagine being bored."
"We have," adds Mike Blackston, "more highly skilled and better trained people than anyone else in the industry. Eventually that leads to better and faster innovation, more efficient application of solutions to problems, lower costs, higher profit, happier people, and greater personal fulfillment. Over the long haul, that’s got to be a good thing for us, for the employees, and ultimately for the company."
To quote from the company’s philosophy again: "This company works at improving the work environment and providing opportunities for growth, but cannot accept the responsibility for individual happiness. We attempt to show our employees ways they can take this responsibility themselves."
In a way, the Bondhus® approach to doing business is an odd pairing of rugged American individualism with a more sanguine, almost Zen-like, serenity. The company emphasizes individual responsibility and self-reliance while promoting personal happiness and fulfillment. "John Bondhus preaches that you’re responsible for your own well-being," says Dick Van Allen, a Bondhus vice president. "But he provides at this company an environment that encourages you to develop that responsibility. He believes that everyone needs a kind of life plan, which includes their own education, to improve their well-being. And through that, the company will benefit both directly and indirectly."
Tireless in pushing a product that people will buy ("We want them to want it bad enough that they’ll pay for it," John Bondhus says), the company also has a concise statement of marketing ethics that insists, "We must never misrepresent our products to get sales or attempt to load customers up with unnecessary products. If we can’t sell our products honestly, we probably don’t have good products to sell."
Bondhus is relentless, aggressive, and bold in its determined quest for global market domination; but also, to cite just one specific example among many, for many years the company has given Diane Fales an opportunity to devise the flexible work schedule she needed to raise a family and never miss her children’s school activities and events. It’s an opportunity that’s given to every Bondhus® employee; it’s part of the company policy.
The mission statement declares, in classic capitalist language: "We exist to create and capitalize on opportunities to build a successful, growing organization which will enable us to realize and provide new potential for our shareholders and employees." But in the very next paragraph, the mission statement gets warmly philosophical, asserting that Bondhus "will endeavor to contribute to world peace and prosperity through expanding world trade."
In theory and in practice, the Bondhus Corporation reflects the character of its president. "John really believes that world trade brings about world peace," Dick Van Allen says. "He’s a very thoughtful man. He’s a philosopher, really, an idealist in some sense. He’s developed a management style that incorporates his philosophy, and he runs his company according to that philosophy. I think that’s pretty remarkable in any company."
Expansion, Growth, Dominion:
From the Beginning and Into the Future
Just when you start to believe that no one will ever "build a better mousetrap," some inventive free spirit comes along and proves you wrong. The young John Bondhus did it in 1964 when he figured out how to exploit his father’s bright idea. He claims now that his invention of the ball-point tool – and perhaps more importantly, his development of an efficient method of mass production and wide marketing and distribution – was a natural and obvious step for him to take: "We were kind of like the farmer’s kids who grow up always knowing how to farm. For them, farming is just part of who they are. Well, our dad was a manufacturer, and we grew up learning machining and the principles of sales, book-keeping and accounting. We learned not just the machinist’s craft, but also the businessman’s perspective – all the elements of running a successful business. It was part of who we were."
Natural and obvious, perhaps, but it also required a flash of inspiration, a lot of hard work, and a little bit of luck. In 1964, the Bondhus Company opened for business in a small shop in Monticello (which doubled as a home for the Bondhus family), producing 300 ball-point blades a day. Those earliest days saw the origin of what would become a company policy: the decision to sell Bondhus® products only through distributors and manufacturers who emphasize customer service and product features over price. By the end of 1965, Bondhus had picked up its first two distributors – Tool Crib and Walter Hammond, both of Minneapolis – both of which are still distributing Bondhus® tools. First-year sales of the new tool totaled just $2,000; but by the end of the second year, the company had more than tripled its sales, to $7,000.
The Bondhus® tool began to catch on. By 1966, the third year of operations, John Bondhus and one of his first employees, Cy Prom, made a sales trip to Rockford and Chicago, Illinois, sleeping in John’s car to save money. That trip resulted in several more distributors signing on to the Bondhus® bandwagon, and led to the hiring of a salesman, Tom Graham, who loaded his Volkswagen with tools and set out to cover Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan.
In early 1967, the company incorporated as Bondhus Corporation and hired two new manufacturer’s representatives to provide coverage on the east and west coasts. Walter Coleman and Kenbil Engineering still represent Bondhus, indicating another company characteristic: when Bondhus finds a distributor or a representative who performs well, the relationship grows and prospers and endures.
By 1968 the product line had expanded to include power and insert bits, hex drivers, L-wrenches, and T-handles. Meanwhile, production capacity was increasing steadily – by 1969 output was up to 400 ball-point blades a day – and sales were exploding in all 50 states and Canada. By the end of that eventful decade, the first trickle of international orders began to arrive in Monticello, with sales in Japan and Venezuela.
With so much activity, the company swiftly outgrew its tiny manufacturing shop and was forced to expand into what had been the Bondhus family’s living quarters. In 1972, John took time off to build himself a new house on a scenic backwater lot overlooking the Mississippi River. That home, which featured a beautifully landscaped lawn, several fish ponds, and a self-designed underwater fish observation platform, would eventually be transformed into the Bondhus® corporate offices.
These were busy years, a period of dizzyingly rapid growth and expansion for the Bondhus Corporation. Demand for Bondhus® tools forced another move to increase production capacity, and the company’s new building on the east side of Monticello opened for business in 1973. Distributors were added swiftly, numbering more than 300 in the U.S. and Canada by the mid-70s.
Meanwhile, John Bondhus had begun to establish his first European importers, in the wake of a 1975 trip to England, France, and Sweden. His decision to expand internationally was neither whimsical nor accidental, although at the time it might have seemed slightly nutty for such a tiny company. By multinational corporate standards, Bondhus wasn’t even a blip on the radar screen. The company had yet to record its first $1/2 million sales year; in 1975 it wasn’t even close to that level of sales. Based in a small Minnesota town, well beyond the outer fringe of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, it had no experience in international sales and marketing, no reliable transportation links to large shipping centers, no clear idea, really, of exactly how to proceed.
What Bondhus did have was a president who thought he saw a promising opportunity for growth abroad, and could find no compelling reason not to enter the international market. Having once determined to expand internationally, John Bondhus never looked back. He did, however, look in every other direction, believing that research and planning would be the keys to successful exporting. He began to develop an international marketing plan and created a strategic planning team which examined what was possible in each potential overseas market. The company set up a tactical plan for each market which included setting measurable objectives and performance evaluations. It began to sign up overseas distributors. And it began to sell a whole lot of tools.
A 1985 magazine article about the company’s exporting successes put it this way: "All it takes...(assuming you have a good product) is a little research, a little gumption, and a willingness to abandon a few stereotyped notions about the cultural differences of many overseas markets – notions that for some reason many American businessmen hold close to their hearts."
Diane Fales, who was there at the time, remembers those early days of exporting like this: "It was all trial and error. When we first started, we couldn’t even get anyone to come to Monticello to get our stuff. I remember once trying to send something to South Africa, and nobody here had any idea of how to address the thing properly. Well, the stupid thing came back four times before it finally got delivered. We had to learn on the job around here. Everything was new and exciting."
At the same time that Bondhus was starting its overseas expansion, domestic sales continued their explosive growth. By the end of the 1970s, Bondhus was manufacturing tools for two of the biggest names in the tool industry, Crescent and Allen, and other private label companies were beginning to take notice of the still-small Monticello company. The manufacturing plant had to be expanded twice to accommodate increased production, research and development, sales, and administration. By 1980, Bondhus had, for the first time, topped $1 million in annual sales. More than 30 employees had joined the firm. And the company purchased its first computer for accounting.
Five years later there still was no sign of a slow-down in the company’s growth. Employee ranks had grown to 55. And by that time about 30 percent of the company’s annual revenues were coming from exports. Bondhus was manufacturing products for eight private label customers. By 1985 the company had opened a sales and distribution office in Japan, where Bondhus was capturing something like 70 percent of total market share. Despite fierce competition from Japanese imitators who were seriously undercutting Bondhus® prices, the Japanese experience offered gratifying affirmation of John Bondhus’ conviction that his ultimate customers – the end users – more than anything else wanted a high quality tool backed up by good service. In Japan, as well as in countless other countries around the world, the essential truth of that conviction has been proven time and again.
If the officers and employees at the Bondhus Corporation knew that they were on to something big, it was just a matter of time before someone else would notice what was going on in Monticello. In 1984, somebody noticed. That year, in a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House, President Ronald Reagan handed to John Bondhus the prestigious Presidential "E" Award for excellence in exporting. Fifteen other American companies – all of them much larger than Bondhus – received the award that year. And in its history, only 60 Minnesota companies have been honored with an "E" Award, most of them much larger than Bondhus. A year later, in May 1985, Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich, at a World Trade Conference in St. Paul, awarded the Bondhus Corporation the state’s first International Trade Award. In presenting the award, the governor remarked: "Bondhus has proved that you don’t have to be big to be international....[The company has shown] the importance of looking at the whole world as a marketplace. Small and medium and large companies have to do the same as Bondhus."
It might have been easy, at the point, for Bondhus to relax a bit and bask in all that recognition and praise. Instead, the company renewed its efforts and plunged ahead. By 1990, more than 80 employees were going to work each day for Bondhus. The company was selling tools through an ever-expanding network of distributors and private label manufacturers around the globe.
By 1996, the GorillaGrip® fold-up tool was fully developed and introduced to the world. Manufacturing processes were streamlined and improved, increasing production capacity by some 600 percent. International sales reached about 42 percent of the company’s total sales (compared to a hand tool industry average of just 4 percent), as Bondhus continued its quest to find and open new international marketing opportunities.
The planet offers tantalizing opportunities for the Bondhus Corporation. Although its position is secure as the world’s leading manufacturer of ball-point hex tools, the company ceaselessly seeks out new markets. Europe is strong, for example, but it could be much stronger if Bondhus can solidify its hold on the three big countries of Germany, France, and Italy. "We could eventually see 30 percent of our business from those three countries, if we do it right, " says John Bondhus. He sees virtually limitless growth in the emerging economic powerhouse nations of Asia. Japan continues to be one of the company’s best customers, and looks to remain so well into the next century. The enormous potential in India remains untapped. Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait – all of these appear on the Bondhus® radar as large and enticing markets. And even at home, in the United States, the new GorillaGrip® fold-up tool is expected to further solidify the Bondhus Corporation’s already solid position at the top of the heap. While the original Bondhus® ball-point tools were sold primarily through the industrial supply markets, the GorillaGrip® fold-up is expected to open wide the previously tough-to-crack DIY (Do-It-Yourself) retail market.
Bondhus is in an enviable position as it focuses on the next century. With a reputation for manufacturing the best Hex tool on the planet, and the revolutionary new fold-up sweeping its way into the worldwide marketplace, Bondhus is poised for unprecedented success. That the company will continue to grow and dominate its market seems assured if – and this is the thing that John Bondhus stresses more than anything else – the company can maintain its focus. "That’s the key for us," he insists.
In his 1997 Executive Summary, John Bondhus summed it all up this way: "The opportunities have been identified – plans are in place to capitalize on these opportunities – and we have the financial strength to carry them out. The other main ingredient we need to successfully achieve our goals is the commitment from all of you to actively support our narrow focus. Together we can ensure that Bondhus Corporation continues to be the world leader in hex products."
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