What sets CHANNELLOCK® apart from the competition?

Is it our superior crafted pliers, forged in the U.S.A.?  Could it be that our pliers are tested and re-tested to ensure our customers get the best tool for their money? Or, is it our choice to utilize North American C1080 steel, which ensures that you’ll be handing your CHANNELLOCK® pliers down to your sons, daughters and grandchildren …that is, if you can ever bear to part with them?

It’s all of that, sure, but more than anything, it’s the loyalty of our associates who work hard and sweat blue that really makes CHANNELLOCK® a worldwide leader year after year. They are the ones who literally touch every tool, ensuring high quality standards. And, it’s our associates who drive production efficiencies all across our floor.

Recently, we honored 21 associates for their loyalty to the CHANNELLOCK® family with a Service Award Dinner and a beautiful glass plaque. At most companies, employees honored with an award receive it after 15 or 20 years, a terrific accomplishment. At CHANNELLOCK®, we honor associates who have been with us for more than 30 years. We can do that because we embrace a culture that values people. As our vice president of manufacturing and engineering, Jon DeArment, said on behalf of the Board of Directors and the DeArment family:

“George B. DeArment founded this company on his four beliefs, one of which is that people are more important than machines. I still believe that this is a valid principal today. Our most valuable asset cannot be found in our balance sheet. It is found in our people.”

Congratulations to our 2012 honorees!  

Celebrating 40 years of employment at CHANNELLOCK®:

• Steve Armburger
• Rich Curlowicz
• Tim Davis

With 35 years of service at CHANNELLOCK®:

• Dave Beatty
• William Beatty
• Alan Collins
• Bill Conner
• Tom Courtney
• Kathy Cowan
• Dennis Cox
• Dorene Ferris
• Ron Hopkins
• Mike Leonhart
• Jeff McCullough
• Mark McLaren
• Kathy Moon
• Bob Motzing
• John Perrine
• Gary Rankin
• Roger Sala

In recognition for 30 years of CHANNELLOCK® service:

• Joe Myers

Marc Johnston

Director of Workforce Development

Channellock, Inc.

The most exciting two minutes in sports comes around this Saturday, and it’s made us think about CHANNELLOCK’s deep connection to horses and the sport of kings.

Did you know that before CHANNELLOCK^® was fiercely forging pliers, we were making tools for farriers, the craftsmen who specialize in trimming and shoeing horse hooves?

That’s how Channellock, Inc., was born 126 years ago. Our blacksmith-founder George B. DeArment began the company, then known as the Champion Bolt Clipper Company, by selling farrier tools from town to town. At the time, he was forging hoof parers, hoof and clinch nippers, buffers and sole knives in his workshop during the winters, then loading them onto a wagon in the spring to sell cross-country.

Here's a picture from an early catalog of some of his wares.

George started his company just 12 years after the first running of the Kentucky Derby, and as we recently learned from Fran Jurga, one of the equine industry’s premier journalists and bloggers, it didn’t take long for the quality reputation of George’s tools to get around. Even today, Jurga says, Champion farrier tools are well known.

“Champion tools are incredibly collectible and coveted by modern-day farriers,” Jurga told us. “The original tools are 100 years old and still in demand!”

A simple online search for Champion farrier tools confirms this, and it’s really no surprise considering how well-regarded Champion farrier tools were when they were new.

By the turn of the century, George was credited with having designed most of the farrier tools on the market. His good reputation had even spread overseas and resulted, to his delighted surprise, in an August 1902 order for a complete set of farrier tools for the royal farrier to England’s King Edward VII. According to the September 11, 1902, issue of Iron Age, a management magazine for metal producers, the tools were slated to be used by the king “at his racing stables and on the different tracks where his steeds appear.”

The article went on to note that, “although the company’s goods are on sale throughout this country and they enjoy a foreign trade, this is their first order of a royal source, and they are, of course, somewhat elated over the achievement.”

Somewhat, indeed.

As we’re relaxing this weekend with a mint julep while watching the Derby, we’ll be thinking back to those early days of CHANNELLOCK^® and about the Champion farrier tools that kept the hoofs and shoes of champion racehorses in shape.

Erin Bahurinsky

Sales Support Representative

Channellock, Inc.

Many of our customers probably don’t realize it, but the company they’ve always known for making quality, American-made pliers with a signature blue grip hasn’t always been known as CHANNELLOCK^®.

Before our business went by the name of Channellock, Inc., it was known as the Champion-DeArment Tool Co. Before that, it was the Champion Tool Co. Even further back, it was simply a lone blacksmith who strived to design a better set of farrier’s tools at the Champion Bolt Clipper Company. 

At 33-years-old, George B. DeArment, my great-grandfather, began our company by designing, testing and hand-forging hoof parers and nippers because he couldn’t find any for sale that worked as well as he wanted them to. After coming up with a set of tools he believed were superior to anything else available, he spent the winter of 1885-1886 building up inventory of these new tools. In the spring of 1886, after the heavy rains had stopped and the roads were firm enough to allow a heavily laden wagon to pass, he loaded up his tools and hit the road. Family legend says he traveled from town to town selling farrier’s tools until the entire inventory was gone, then he sold his horse and wagon and took the railroad back home to Evansburg, Pa. (now called Conneaut Lake, which is just a 10-mile jaunt from Meadville).

This was the start of George’s venture, and he grew it over the next five years until 1891, when the local bank went under during a financial panic. The result was that George’s business was left without monetary resources. Never one to buckle under, he started anew under the name of The Champion Tool Company. The reputation spread quickly, and by August 1902 George received an order for a set of Champion farrier’s tools from King Edward VII of England.

By the 1920s, the company was facing two major challenges. The first was that the market for farrier’s tools was shrinking dramatically. The second was that the company name not only reflected aging technology, but was also not very distinctive. Using the name “Champion” for a company was as common as using “Acme.” George’s sons Howard and Almon decided the best course of action would be to expand the product line by adding pliers and change the company name to Champion-DeArment Tool Co.

In 1933, our company developed a brand new tool that eventually led to our final name change. Chief Engineer Howard Manning came up with the tongue and groove plier, a completely new concept for adjustable pliers, which proved to be the foundation of the company we are today. The company patented the plier and branded it CHANNELLOCK^®. By 1964, the name CHANNELLOCK^® had become so widely and favorably known that we decided to change our name one more time, from Champion DeArment Tool Co. to Channellock, Inc.

It’s amazing to think about how far our company has come. It’s a testament to the American dream that one man, through ingenuity and hard work, could start a business in a small town in Pennsylvania that eventually would become, with the help of American workers who literally put their blood and sweat into manufacturing countless pliers, a household name around the world.

William S. DeArment

President & CEO

Channellock, Inc.