North Idaho native Eric Thun says he spent enough time in the corporate world to get a strong distaste for the moving of manufacturing offshore, and came back to the Spokane area to escape that environment and hopefully do his small part to counter that job-sapping trend.

He now is president and majority owner of Spring Tools Inc., a Spokane Valley maker of spring-driven impact tools, such as nail starters and center punches, that it markets to professional painters, carpenters, furniture builders, and metal workers, as well as do-it-yourselfers and hobbyists.

He founded the company four years ago after buying the assets of Noxon Inc., which introduced spring-driven impact tools here in the early 1990s, but says he substantially has revamped and expanded the product lineup, while also putting a heavy emphasis on marketing the tools to professional users.

Most of the tools are the size of pens and consist of two small, hardened-steel rods bound end to end with a tightly coiled, wraparound spring. Users pull back on the rear end of the tool, then release it to deliver what the company claims is up to 3,500 pounds per square inch of striking force to their special-purpose tips. The user controls the amount of force applied to the surface by varying the spring tension.

The company markets the tools as a convenient alternative to hammers in certain uses, such as when working in tight spaces or on precision jobs, and says they avoid the mishits, mashed fingers, and dinged woodwork that often result with hammers.

"Once you use them, you will never use a hammer and nail set again...ever," Thun asserts.

The company currently makes more than 20 different types of tools, and it sells them singly and in packaged sets and assortments ranging in suggested retail price from around $10 to $70. It obtains all of the components, materials, and heat-hardening services for its tools from Spokane-area and regional companies, he says, adding that they're "totally a Northwest product."

Spring Tools currently employs 10 people, some of them part time, and occupies an unmarked, 4,000-square-foot leased space in a small multitenant industrial building at 2921 N. University, east of Millwood and just south of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. tracks.

Thun says, though, that the company is working on tentative plans to construct an 8,000- to 10,000-square-foot building on the West Plains. It recently landed a contract to supply its products to all of the Sherwin-Williams Co.'s 3,200 paint stores, which it expects will quadruple its revenues this year to around $4 million and force it to expand its production capabilities, he says.

The new building is to be located on an acre of land that Thun says he has bought near the intersection of Thorpe and Fosseen roads, south of the Interstate 90-Geiger Boulevard interchange. He says he hopes to begin construction of the planned building this summer and move the company there by fall, though that timing will depend on continuing demand growth and obtaining project financing. Garco Construction Inc., of Spokane, would design and erect the building.

If that project comes together, Spring Tools will add more production equipment and probably will double or triple the size of its work force, but might need to add some equipment even before the move to keep up with rising volume, Thun says.

The planned development site is part of 12 acres of vacant light-industrial-zoned land there that Spokane real estate company Hawkins Edwards Inc. divided into 16 lots and has been marketing for the partnership that owns it.

Of the contract with Sherwin-Williams, Thun says, "That's a huge milestone. That's 'ginormous.' What it really means is a brand is born, because Sherwin-Williams is the gold standard for the whole painting industry."

Getting its products into that company's stores elevates Spring Tools' stature as it seeks to negotiate contracts with other large retail chains, such as Lowe's Cos., with which he says he already has been talking and hopes to reach a formal agreement soon.

Spring Tools garnered the contract with Sherwin-Williams last October, and since then has shipped an opening order of 40,000 pieces, Thun says. He adds that once sales in that company's stores ramp up fully, he expects his company to be shipping that many pieces to Sherwin-Williams every month.

The Spokane company's tool lineup includes some designed for use on wood and others for metal. Tools range from the previously mentioned nail starters, which are designed to start and guide finish nails, and door hinge pin removers, to a 48-piece identification stamping and recoining kit. That kit includes a full range of letters and numbers for stamping ID information on hard surfaces, and recoining bits for repairing damaged fasteners or stripped screw heads.

Thun says Spring Tools also recently introduced a high-impact screwdriver for removing stripped or corroded fasteners, and has developed a 12-in-1 tool—"like a painter's Leatherman"—that it plans to begin selling this summer. That multipurpose device includes a flexible putty knife blade that retracts into the heavy-duty handle, a separate small folding knife for cutting the tips off of caulking tubes, and a serrated edge for cutting through plastics, among other features.

Thun says that when he bought the assets of Noxon, "It was struggling a little bit, and we developed some new tools and bought some machinery to make the tools in-house."

The primary piece of equipment that dominates Spring Tools' shop is what's known as a Swiss screw machine. The computerized metal-forming contraption cuts and finishes long steel rods into the small grooved tool components that then are sent out for heat-hardening treatment, after which they're returned to the shop for assembly and packaging. Though the machine runs round-the-clock, Thun says he may need to buy another one soon to keep up with orders for the company's products.

Along with selling the Spring Tools products under its own name, it also sells some under private label through Mac Tools Inc., a large tool company that serves professional users.

Thun originally is from Kellogg, Idaho, where his father worked as a mechanical engineer for the Bunker Hill Mining Co. His family moved to Coeur d'Alene, where he graduated from high school in 1981. He then spent eight years in the U.S. Air Force, including time at Fairchild Air Force Base as a bomber navigator, followed by eight years at the Micron Technology Inc. plant in Boise, where he worked as a test engineer testing computer chips.

While there, he says, he obtained a degree in marketing from Boise State University, then worked his way up the corporate marketing ladder from 1997 to 2004 at positions with Hyundai's semiconductor division in the Silicon Valley and Sharp Corp.'s electronic-components division, in Camas, Wash., near Vancouver. In the latter position, he says, he was vice president of marketing for the U.S. and Israel for that Sharp division, reporting directly to the division's global chief.

He became disillusioned over time, though, he says, adding, "I was just bewildered that everything in a few years had moved offshore. I ultimately decided that I didn't want anything to do with corporate America anymore."

He decided he wanted to return here to start his own business—his wife, Stephanie, is from Spokane—and spent some time evaluating opportunities before settling on the spring-driven impact tool venture. His father, Richard, though now retired, comes into the business regularly, he says, and has been instrumental in helping him design tools.

"My whole goal has been to build a national brand, and it's very hard to do on a shoestring budget," Thun says, but he adds that he's excited about the company's recent strides.