Scott and I were lucky enough to be able to visit some of our awesome suppliers in the USA in Oct this year.

This was a trip, like many others, was postponed from 2019 due to Covid. So we were chomping at the bit to finally go see everyone.

We visited Occidental Leather's site in Santa Rosa, California. We meet the team who run the office side and also some of the sewer's who make the Occidental Leather and Badger Toolbelts range. Joel, from Badger, was there to greet us, we didn't know he could make it (as he lives in Indianna) so that was an awesome surprise. 

We could see how the products in both brand's ranges are made and exactly why they are such good quality and such low warranty issues. Each and every team member clearly has so much pride in their work, it was awesome to see. The whole place had a really nice feeling to it, like a proper family run business.

I will be writing another blog more in detail about this visit and their production processes as I think it is really interesting.

After this visit and some pretty incredible lunch, we took a day out to explore the area, Napa and of course had a drop or two of wine. It would be rude not to!

We then drove 4 hours to see Mark & Tracy at the Martinez ranch. This is our 3rd trip now to see Mark and we are always made to feel so welcome. Mark had a Tritip steak on a slow cook, which we had after a good catch up.

We heard about all the exciting things in the pipeline with Hultafors Group North America. Our lips are sealed though for the time being!

We spent the evening with Tracy and met her sons, Joe and Luke - who are both really nice lads. We went to a Taco/Food Truck drive in at a disused airbase, with a bar which was super fun and delicious.

Next day we drove, a casual 7 hours down to San Diego for STAFDA - one of the major construction industry shows in the USA. DiamondBack Toolbelts had kindly got us show tickets to attend. 

Halloween, is HUGE in USA. As a Brit, I don't think I can state that enough. San Diego went OFF! Every night was insane, so much fancy dress and partying.

We spent most evenings eating burgers, steak and hanging out with Joel - Badger, Marc, Mike, Peter - Occi and Louis, Sven & Tony - Squijig /@Hollywood decks, @Ksparky and Murray & Natalie - @kreugerconstruction.

We found an awesome Coin Op, which was full of old arcade machines, pin ball, skee ball, basketball etc. We had a lot of fun!

We meet ISOtunes, Tajima and Hultafors at the show which was great as well and got some new product ideas which we are excited about.

We then completed our trip driving up the coast to Santa Barbara & Carmel. 1000 miles of driving and probably 100,000 calories of food and drink but worth every one of them.

Huge thanks to our amazing suppliers for looking after us during our visit and so good to finally put some faces to names as well for those we haven't met before