Southeast Tool was started in 1998 in the basement of Chuck Hicks’ home as a response to what appeared to be a serious gap in the tooling industry: a tool and router bit supplier that truly focused on the needs of the customer. A year later, the company relocated for the first time.

Outgrowing that location, Southeast moved to a 2,000-square-foot location in an industrial park. Less than four years after that, the company purchased the 20,000-square-foot building it now occupies. In addition to the main warehouse in Conover, North Carolina, the company has additional warehouses in Portland, Oregon, and Ontario, Canada.

Southeast Tool now stocks and sells more than 6,000 different items in its current catalog, which includes a wide array of woodworking router bits, router bits for plastic, metric boring bits, solid carbide spirals, and other tooling items.