Please take a moment to let me introduce the Hubbard Jointer Company and our products to you.

My father, Dick Hubbard, started laying brick in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1924. He continued as a bricklayer and masonry contractor until 1965. During the latter years of his bricklaying career Dick began to develop tools for his own use that were better than anything then commercially available. His friends began asking for them. Then people from further and further away asked for them. In 1960 Dick began commercial production of the Hubbard Jointer. In 1965 he quit laying brick to devote all of his time to the Hubbard Jointer Company. I bought the company from my father in 1986. Dad was 79 years old and thought he might like to do something else for a while. Dad is now 98 years old, fit and able and still enjoying life. 

The Hubbard Jointer Company is a small company located in rural Washington State near Cheney, Washington. The Company provides a livable income to it's full-time employees and takes pride in providing part-time work for students from Eastern Washington University. We pay well enough to enable the students to remain in school without developing debt. We adapt the work schedule to their school schedule and in this way have enabled a number of students to remain in college, complete their degree work and move on to fruitful careers elsewhere.

Several years ago one of the largest trowel trade tool distributors in the United States contacted me. They are a company whose name we have all heard. They said they wanted to distribute my tools. I was flattered. I provided them with the engineering data on my tools so they would know what a great product they were buying. They took the information to a company in China and contracted with them to copy The Hubbard Jointer. The company in China immediately sent a sales force back to this country and started selling the imitation tool to other distributors.  

Recently, we learned that one of our largest and most steadfast customers has decided to carry the imitation tool. The customer acknowledges the very poor quality of the imitation but it can be purchased for much less than the Hubbard Jointer. The price point became an important issue for this customer. Of course the distributor is passing only a fraction of the cost difference on to his dealers and bricklayers. He is enjoying the additional profit at the expense quality. 

The threat to my company comes from more than price competition. The imitation tool appears so much like the Hubbard Jointer that the craftsmen who are accustomed to buying my tools are often unaware the tool they are purchasing is not our product. Unscrupulous dealers are more than willingly buy the cheap imitation and provide it often at the price the craftsman is accustomed to paying for the quality of the original Hubbard Jointer. The switch is only discovered when the poor quality of the imitation disappoints the craftsman and he realizes the tool he received is not the tool he thought he purchased. Worse, now he does not know where to get the quality tool he was accustomed to using.

There are many worrisome aspects to the off-shore products. The most frustrating consideration for the Hubbard Jointer Company is the fact that the tool my father invented and perfected is being confused with a cheap, poor quality tool. A tool copied by people who do not understand the principles of its design nor even how or where they are to be used. Finished masonry is not in the Chinese tradition.

Are we, as Americans, becoming willing to exchange high quality, well designed and well crafted products for poor quality just because it has a lower price? Possibly, we are forgetting what quality means. It is a false economy to purchase several cheap look alike tools instead of one tool designed and fabricated to last a lifetime. 

Are we also forgetting that “Made in America” means “Made in America by Americans?” Most of us understand that when products we are willing and capable of producing go off-shore our ability to produce is soon gone as well. Employment created by production is also gone. Gone. 

I challenge you to go to the mall or to that massive retailer famed for destroying the fabric of communities all across America and look for “Made in America” labels on the products there. That label is rare and increasingly difficult to find. Perhaps soon as difficult to find as a good job. I ask you, where will your children find employment when all of the jobs are off-shore? 

If my read on the effects of off-shore production are accurate we may soon have an economy equal to that of third world countries. We, too, can look forward to living in cardboard boxes and earning fifty cents a day. An exaggeration? Perhaps, but I have lived in China and I would not wish their lot on my fellow Americans. 

What can we do? We can buy products produced by people you may know, your friends and neighbors, people who care about what they do and how what they do affects others. People who stand behind what they do and seek your satisfaction. You may pay a little more but you will receive so much more. Please buy American.

Ric Hubbard 

President
Hubbard Jointers, Inc.