Tim Leatherman Quotes

104 Tim Leatherman Quotes

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[In June 2002 on his wife Chau having to quit the workforce to take care of their only child Lee who was diagnosed with Leukemia when he was 2 and half years old.] I have got lucky twice in my life. I have never bought a lottery ticket. The form of leukaemia my son had, only one in four survives, and the odds of [an idea] being patented, well, only one in a hundred ever gets on the marketplace. There are far more that never even get patented. I have been very fortunate. [His son has now fully recovered.]
Tim Leatherman

On my 30th birthday I went to bed and tears starting coming down, and I thought 'What am I doing with my life. What do I have to show for all this time?' But I am a resilient person, and the next day I got up and carried on.
Tim Leatherman

[In July 2003 on making the first ‘Leatherman’ – a cardboard copy of a pocket survival tool he intended to perfect after having mechanical issues during a nine-month sojourn through Europe back in 1975.] I told my wife the project would take a couple of months. It seems to have taken longer.
Tim Leatherman

[In July 2003.] The outdoorsman is our biggest market, and the second biggest market is professional users like all the repair guys, the EMTs, the firemen, carpenters, etc. Our next push will be tools with special features for niche markets like archery, biking or yachting.
Tim Leatherman

[In July 2003 on cheap copies of the Leatherman.] Competition is a good thing for us because it constantly pushes us to make our products better. Competition is also good for the consumer. We get a lot of feedback from our customers, and some of their ideas are incorporated into improvements.
Tim Leatherman

[In March 2005.] I, too, have started out with a cheapie, but then relearned that quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.
Tim Leatherman

[In July 2007.] My wife and I decided to travel abroad in 1975. We were young - it was one of those budget trips, and we bought an old Fiat in Amsterdam for $300. I was carrying a Boy Scout-type knife and used it for everything, from slicing bread to making adjustments to the car. But I kept wishing I had a pair of pliers! During the trip - it lasted almost nine months - I had a piece of paper in my pocket where I listed ideas for new products, things I might work on back in the U.S. It was in a hotel room in Tehran that I started sketching a pocketknife that contained pliers.
Tim Leatherman

I asked my wife if I could build it - just one for me. I told her it would only take a month, and she got a job to support us. I set up shop in the garage and picked up a file and a hacksaw… My month turned into three years…
Tim Leatherman

I learned that I'm not a very good inventor - I don't have much foresight. You know Marconi, who built some of the first radios? I've heard that before he picked up a pencil, he had the entire model envisioned in his mind. I'm not that way. It took a few months just to visualize each part of the knife.
Tim Leatherman

The first concept was a knife with a pair of regular pliers, and then a separate needle nose would swing over and be driven by the pliers. Then I got really ambitious and decided to add a feature that would lock the pliers, so that once I'd grab onto something, they would stay clamped. I wanted to put in a hacksaw, but they wear out pretty fast. I even tried to put in a can opener, a flat screwdriver, a leather punch, a pair of scissors, and a Phillips screwdriver.
Tim Leatherman



I filed for a patent. I was hoping for an easy way out, that someone would pay me a million dollars for the patent rights.
Tim Leatherman

I thought my most likely prospects would be knife companies, so I brought my prototype to Gerber, a Portland, Ore., knife business. They looked it over and said, ‘This isn't a knife, it's a tool. We're not in the tool business.’ I still thought it was a knife, so I went to the major knife companies, but they all said no. I eventually got the message, and decided that if it's not a knife, it's a tool. I visited several tool companies, and they all said, ‘This isn't a tool, it's a gadget. Gadgets don't sell.’
Tim Leatherman

My wife and I decided I should get a real job. I still had faith that I could sell the tool to some company, but…
Tim Leatherman

I knew nothing about business.
Tim Leatherman

I was ready to give up.
Tim Leatherman

We tried the Army, thinking it could ship our tool to every soldier. We sent proposals to 23 government contacts and quickly received two ‘no's’ and one ‘we acknowledge receiving it and will get back to you in due course.’ We still haven't heard back from the other 20.
Tim Leatherman

We were so naive!
Tim Leatherman

Eight years after my first sketch - we started wondering about exactly who our customer was. If you envision a spectrum of knives and tools, Swiss Army knives sit on one side, and hand tools such as files and pliers sit on the other. Ours fit in the middle…
Tim Leatherman

We sold about 30,000 tools in 1984 and 69,000 the next year. By 1993 we were selling more than one million units a year. I realized I had gotten lucky…
Tim Leatherman

Initially, I failed to understand who my customer was. It was the catalogs that brought them to me.
Tim Leatherman



[In July 2007.] Earlier this year I stepped down from my post as president, giving up one of my four positions. I'm still chairman, majority shareholder, and landlord. I think I've done a pretty good job of letting go, but it is important for me to come in every few weeks to meet with the CEO.
Tim Leatherman

When Steve [Berliner] and I were brainstorming company names, I told him we didn't need to name it after me. But he insisted, and I think he was pretty wise in doing so. Since my name is on every tool we make, I still feel a responsibility for the quality of each one we sell.
Tim Leatherman

[In July 2008 on the Leatherman Group’s 25 year anniversary.] It’s important to me that Leatherman give back to the community by providing jobs and contributing to our local economy.
Tim Leatherman

We thought we could make and sell about 4,000 tools that year [1983.]. In 1984, we sold nearly 30,000.
Tim Leatherman

[On Leatherman’s commitment to quality.] Specs for everything, everything to specs.
Tim Leatherman

[In February 2013 on originally spending two and a half years in Vietnam prior to travelling to Europe.] It was there that I began to develop a keen interest in and appreciation for mechanical things and how they worked. I credit this time as the seed that eventually grew into the idea behind the development of the Leatherman tool.
Tim Leatherman

I became very interested in mechanical things and repair, and the way things work. And I would get things and take them apart, figuring out how they’re working. When there’s a problem, I tried to figure out how I could fix it.
Tim Leatherman

[In February 2013.] Sometimes I needed pliers to fix the car or the plumbing in the hotels. That’s the original reason for creating this multi-tool: I wanted to be able to fix things with a tool right with me. I didn’t want to carry a big tool, I wanted something small and compact.
Tim Leatherman

My original idea to make money was to get a patent and then sell it.
Tim Leatherman

[After all his initial rejections.] Maybe I’ll have to start a business to get this tool on the market.
Tim Leatherman



[In February 2013.] My advice for young Vietnamese who want to start their own business is that you should do something you feel passionate about and believe in the thing you decide to do. In our life, we’re going to face some challenges so try to do everything you can to overcome those challenges. To do so, be willing to continue to educate yourself. When having some difficulties then be prepared to have a partner, someone who is strong in areas where you’re weak and you’re strong in areas where your partner’s weak. Learn to start small and grow. Don’t think that you need to borrow a lot of money and have to start big and try to get bigger.
Tim Leatherman

[In February 2013.] Whenever I thought about [failure], I would try to put it out of my mind and the next morning get up and move forward,’ he said. ‘I did not fear failure at all because every time I failed I was maybe disappointed but I was learning that ‘OK, that needs to be stronger, that needs to be more flexible.’ So every failure was a teaching moment that taught me something.
Tim Leatherman

We were hoping to make and sell 4,000 tools in our first year but the number jumped to 30,000 then.
Tim Leatherman

[In March 2013.] What was Tim’s first business endeavour after graduating from university? The answer is selling Vespa Luggage Racks.
Tim Leatherman

[In July 2013.] When I was a kid I was not very interested in mechanical things. I can quite vividly remember when I did become interested in mechanical things. I lived in Vietnam for two and a half years… One of my jobs in Vietnam was teaching English.
Tim Leatherman

[On being told by a fellow English teacher that Motor Scooters were really very simple.] From then on I became very, very interested in how things worked.
Tim Leatherman

Three years of developing the prototype, four more years of trying to sell the patent and then that’s where Steve [Berliner] stepped in and we became business partners to get the tool onto the market… Joining up with Steve rejuvenated my efforts because he had some fresh ideas and it’s lonely developing a tool, developing an invention that you’re trying to sell the patent rights to.
Tim Leatherman

[On a key breakthrough selling it first through a mail order catalogue.] They thought it was a great product but was way too expensive.
Tim Leatherman

[On getting his first order for 500 units and then another customer ordering 250 units.] I can remember quite vividly when I realized that this was for real - that good things were going to happen.
Tim Leatherman

[When the initial 500 were already pre-sold.] A week later they called and said the 500 are gone. Here’s another order for 750. Two weeks later they said the 750 are sold here’s an order for a 1,000. That’s when we knew that something special was happening.
Tim Leatherman



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