If you have been following us on Facebook or Twitter, you know we headed down for the 2015 National Tradesman Event by Irwin last week. If you remember we also attended this event in Chicago back in 2013. This time instead of Chicago, we headed down to North Carolina for some warm weather. Besides meeting some very cool people from Irwin, we had the chance to look around and see their testing facility, which was pretty cool.
Now I am not going to say I fully understand the machines and how they test equipment, but it did look impressive. It was amazing the amount of thought and time that goes into testing each product. While we were there, we also had a chance to learn about their new pliers and also their new chalk lines. While the pliers and other hand tools where cool, the chalk line is what really grabbed my attention. It’s amazing all the little things that go into not only the tool, but the chalk. It was really cool to see how they were made to compliment each other. It’s way more than a piece of string and some chalk that make up these tools. There are different chalk lines for different tools. Irwin even has a nice numbering system to help the user determine what chalk to use. I am not going to go into everything as we will be releasing a video of a more in depth look.
Next on the agenda was job site visits. We rode along with Irwin employees to two different job sites where they handed out some tools and gave their thanks.
After our job site visits, we took a ride over to the location where they were going to announce the winner of the 2015 tradesman of the year. Tradesman of the year is a day that is celebrated for all the hard work tradesmen do all over our country. You can check out the Tradesman page to learn more and enter you or someone you know for 2016. The winner is picked from thousands of entries and is no easy task. This year the winner won a Ford Pickup truck and a bunch of Irwin tools, pretty nice prize. This year the winner was Jen Netherwood. We had the opportunity to meet her and have to say she was very cool. She does a lot of work with the local jail system to help rehabilitate inmates. She teaches them various trades and other skills, so when they are released, they have the required skills to get a job in the trades.
I have to say this was a great event. The people were nice, the food was great, we had a chance to learn about Irwin, not only the tools, but Irwin as a company. We also visited some job sites to help celebrate National Tradesman day. Who could ask for anything more?
Very cool! Thanks for sharing this.