About
Our Founding
John StoneAfter graduating from the University of Washington in 1964, John Stone, our company’s founder, began his career in aerospace as a salesman for General Components, a distributor of aerospace and defense products located in Bellevue, Washington. General Components principal product line included products manufactured by Weatherhead, a manufacturer of hydraulic components for industrial and aerospace applications.
Eventually General Components was bought out by Weatherhead. After acquiring General Components, Weatherhead planned to reduce its product line to include only Weatherhead products. Seeing an opportunity before him, John founded Component Products with his wife, Janet Stone, in 1967 in order to provide customers with the products no longer offered by General Components.
Janet StoneFrom Distributor To Manufacturer
Component Products began as a distributor of aerospace and defense products; however, over time, John decided he wanted more control over the products he sold. Consequently, he started to acquire the machines necessary to manufacture the products himself. His first purchase was an Emco Maximat V10-P; a manual machine that included mill and lathe capabilities. Lacking a space of his own, John setup the machine in his garage, marking the beginning of Component Product’s transformation from a distributor into a manufacturer. It was a humble beginning; but as the business grew, John continued to expand its capabilities with new machines. Eventually he purchased a permanent location for his machines which remains the location of Component Products today.
OUR MOTTO
Our motto has always been to, “Solve the customer’s problem.” In general, this means we strive to provide our customers with the products they need when they need it, but it also means that we strive to be flexible enough to accommodate unique and urgent customer demands.
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As an example of our motto in action, a customer of ours once had an issue with a missing component on an airplane that was otherwise ready for delivery. The component was not a critical component of the plane; however, our customer did not want to deliver the plane with a missing component. They contacted the original manufacturer for a replacement but were informed that a replacement would take six to eight weeks. Six to eight weeks was unacceptable for our customer, so they began searching for a local machine shop capable of manufacturing the component. Eventually the request landed on our doorstep. We accepted the request, began working immediately, and delivered the product to our customer within two days. As a result, our customer nominated us for a supplier of the year award in their small business category.
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The example above demonstrates the kind of supplier we strive to be: a supplier trusted by its customers with addressing unique challenges. However, we are just as concerned with being a supplier that our customers can depend on. Many of our customers have been with us for decades, and we believe it is because of our commitment to solving problems, delivering quality products, and delivering on time.