From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox:
Where would we be as a society without the nuts and bolts that hold everything together? I don’t mean that figuratively but literally. Our country is literally held together by nuts and bolts which means those nuts and bolts had better be up to standards. That’s not a problem for the Click Bond Inc., a family run manufacturer that has been cranking out fasteners for over forty years. Check out this profile of the company. Collie Hunter, the company’s CFO has the money quote: “We have to get vocational education back in the schools and teach people what it means to go to work, and what skills they need and that those skills must include English and math.” Amen to that.
LOCAL CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY: NUTS AND BOLTS KEY TO SUCCESS FOR CLICK BOND by Ray Hagar
Click Bond Inc., would be an easy business to overlook in Northern Nevada. There is no sign in front of its Carson City headquarters. It sits at the end of a road next to the Carson City Airport. There’s not much landscaping. Or parking.
And at first blush, Click Bond products don’t sound too exciting. “Basically, it’s nuts and screws,” said Collie Hutter, the company’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer. Yet people who travel in trains, boats, planes and helicopters the world over can be thankful for Click Bond’s intricate, patented aerospace fasteners. So can the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, since Click Bond fasteners are also instrumental in the development of the F-35 joint strike fighter, the next generation fighter for the United States and its allies.
Hutter runs the company with her husband, Charles Hutter. They have been married 39 years. He is the inventor of the aerospace fasteners, with more than 70 patents to his name. He carries the CEO title and runs the engineering department. He was inducted into the Nevada Inventors Hall of Fame in 1993. Yet Collie Hutter has the business moxie. She is the real boss because, “I have the checkbook in my bottom drawer,” she said with a smile.
The Hutters moved the company to Carson City 30 years ago from Burbank, Calif. They have grown from five employees to more than 300, including 249 in Carson City, about 60 more at a manufacturing plant in Watertown, Conn., and sales engineers in Canada and England.
Their customers include aerospace giants such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Air Canada, British Aerospace, Bombardier and Airbus. Those giants can’t complete an airplane construction without aerospace fasteners, many of which come from Click Bond.
No fastener that leaves Carson City for worldwide shipping can have a flaw. Peoples’ lives are at stake, Hutter said. “Some of the people here who I admire the most are those who can do what looks like the world’s most boring task over and over, and yet every time, it is perfectly done,” Hutter said about the machinists she employs. “Each time they do it, they know that it has to be right and they take great pride in that. They remember that every one of those parts is going on an airplane and they have to be right.”
To read the rest of the profile click here.
