We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jason Angelini a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jason thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

I would say that the biggest difference we are most proud of is how vertical our company is. Not only do we make all our products ourselves, but we also do all our own shipping/fulfillment, customer service, marketing, sales, etc. This allows us to maintain exceptional control over our products, customer engagement, branding, etc. There is a big temptation to outsource in this time of AI and cheap overseas labor, but you lose so much touch with your business when you do that. Keeping all of this in-house is not great for our bottom line and we definitely have higher overhead costs, but it is allowing us to build a company and brand that we are intimately connected with and I believe it is paying off and will continue benefiting us in the long run.

All of our products and materials are sourced and made in the USA. Our workshop is located in Wilmington, MA and we have a small but dedicated team. At our workshop, each product is carefully made by hand, quality checked by hand, and shipped by hand. If you buy a belt from a department store, they are almost all mass produced overseas using fake leather that is glued together. This is why belts from department stores usually split or crack after a couple of months whereas we use American full grain leather that is built to last a lifetime.

We have in-house customer service dedicated employees who are readily available to answer any questions and resolve any issues a customer may have which can be hard to come by these days. When you call our shop, you will speak with one of our team members and they will do everything in their power to help resolve your issue. We have almost no negative reviews on our website, on Google or on Amazon and that is because we always take care of our customers and make sure they are happy with their products.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Jason Angelini, and I am a co-founder of American Bench Craft. American Bench Craft is a Veteran owned leather goods company based out of Wilmington, MA. American Bench Craft was founded in 2014 by my brother Chris and I with the mission to manufacture top quality leather products that are designed to withstand the rigors of everyday use. We combine unique designs, sturdy, high-quality materials, and reliable American craftsmanship to offer leather products that truly stand the test of time. All of our products are handcrafted using full grain leather and solid brass hardware.

We are NOT artisanal craftsmen. Our products are simple, rugged, and built for working men and women. Our core products are our belts, sheaths and wallets. Our target market is blue collar tradesmen that are using and abusing our products everyday on the jobsite. Here is a review that I think captures what our products are all about:

“I knew the belt was gonna be thick, but damn! This is gonna outlast the apocalypse!” -Jordan K.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

All of our products are designed and manufactured in house. I come from an engineering background so I do all the designing and prototyping at our workshop.

The design process almost always starts when a bunch of customers begin requesting the same product over and over. This makes for a more motivating design process because I know that once I perfect the product we already have customers lined up to buy. I use the 2D CAD software (Draftsight) to design all of our product templates, which I cut by hand to test the design before sending them to production to have tooling made. It usually takes multiple attempts and a bunch of small adjustments in CAD to get the perfect design. I usually test a design for at least a couple months before I have the tooling made.

As we’ve scaled, I’ve learned that even simple processes are prone to quality control issues and you can’t underestimate the importance of stringent quality control processes. Human error is unavoidable and rather than trying to avoid it we try to focus on being able to identify it quickly and reliably to minimize waste and ensure every product we send out the door meets our standards.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

We are a bit unconventional when it comes to hiring. We don’t recruit and hire based on job qualifications, college degree, etc. but rather hire people who have ambition, are hardworking and take pride in their work. This is obviously hard to put in a job posting so a lot of our hiring has come from word of mouth referrals or honestly, random luck. For example, our operations manager Josh comes from a psychology background and he walked in off the street to ask for a job. We started him on shipping and fulfillment but quickly realized how talented of a worker he was so we trained him in our operations and within a couple of months he dramatically improved our quality assurance and manufacturing processes. Leah, our marketing and advertising manager comes from a background in GIS but we saw a lot of creativity in her work so we bought her a camera and let her train herself in photography, videography, editing, branding, etc. and she has excelled in that role. Lastly, our sales rep Kelly was a Physical Therapist but she’s very personable and has closed more deals than any of us in her first year. This type of hiring is unorthodox and can make it difficult because it is a long, slow training process but so far it has definitely been worth the investment.    

Contact Info:

• Website: https://americanbenchcraft.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benchcraft/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/americanbenchcraftusa
• Youtube: youtube.com/user/AmericanBenchCraft