Leatherman stands behind all our tools with a 25-year warranty (40 years if you’re an Insider). But who is behind our warranty? Get all the details you’d ever want to know from our own Matt Brown, who worked his way up to becoming our Warranty Manager.

After you watch the video, read on to learn more about Leatherman’s top Tool Doctor.

Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your Leatherman journey? 

I started as an intern right out of engineering school in our stamping department. I got my foot in the door at Leatherman when I found out there was a group of employees that went mountain biking after work, which is one of my favorite things to do. One of them was looking for an engineering intern, and I jumped at the opportunity.  

I leveraged my internship into a role as a Product Design Engineer, and over the years, worked my way to Sr. Design Engineer. I supported our manufacturing team in maintaining functionality and performance from an end user perspective. I got the opportunity to help launch a new platform, which turned into the FREE® series of products. I did a lot of the work to develop the locking mechanisms, jaw springs, and the magnetic architecture.   

I jumped over to Project Management and helped launch a series of tools, Bond®, Curl®, Raptor® Response, Bolster® and ARC®. I also managed the move of our Warranty department between two buildings here in Portland. Bringing our warranty department closer to the factory line improved our access to components, tooling, and our incredible knowledge base of employees.  

I’ve been in this role since late 2022 and am enjoying all the new things to learn and work on. One of the reasons I wanted to work at Leatherman was that it’s a product that resonates with people, and I think I’ve been fortunate to be in positions to impact that through design, product launches, and now how we stand by those customers for the long term in warranty.   

You are the first Warranty Manager to come from the Engineering side of Leatherman. Talk a little bit about the difference between designing tools and fixing tools.  

We typically use a target customer as we develop a new product, especially if it’s a specialty tool like Signal® or MUT®. The engineer’s role is to take somewhat abstract user requirements and turn them into quantitative measurements that we can test against. 

How strong does it need to be? How will the forces and loading happen on the tool? We take this and create lab tests that simulate what we anticipate these tools will go through in the real world. This testing room is affectionately known as the Torture Chamber.  

Warranty is sort of the reverse of that situation. We see how our tools perform out in the real world and provide direct feedback to our Product Managers and Engineers. Sometimes people use our tools in novel ways we haven’t thought of before. We collect all this information and try to make how we develop our next tool even better.   

Walk us through a warranty case from the time it lands here at Leatherman HQ to the time it ships back to its person. 

Warranty Packages are unboxed and organized, then entered into our case management system. Depending on what tool it is, how damaged it is, and if the customer selected if the tool is “Sentimental” or not, we’ll route the case through the appropriate path. 

We try to repair as much as we can, both from a sustainability perspective of not wasting good parts, and it helps us keep each customer’s special tool in service as long as we can. Some tools can’t be repaired and will get replaced, however. When the repair is done, we’ll do a final QC check and ship the tool back to the customer.

What’s your team like? How did they come to their positions and what are they doing during a typical day? 

We’ve got a ton of experience on the warranty team. Several have been with Leatherman over 30 years. Most of them started in some sort of assembly role and worked their way up over the years. Warranty roles are the best of the best at Leatherman. Even after working with our products as an Engineer for almost a decade, I am still learning new things from them all the time. 

We’ve got a Case Management team that is checking in tools, managing the flow of cases, and shipping them back out to customers. We’ve also got a repair team that is cleaning and repairing tools. 

The team needs to know every tool Leatherman has made over the years, how to repair them, and how to fully assess them for functionality before shipping. We’re very fortunate to have such experienced people on our team.     

Technically, their title is Warranty Case Specialist, but I've heard the term "Tool Doctor" bandied about. In my head, I'm picturing some X-Files-like scene with Scully and Mulder swapping theories around a patient in bed with a mysterious ailment. The everyday situation at Leatherman probably isn't quite like that, but at the core, there's likely a decision tree with every warranty submission: (1) what's wrong with this tool? and (2) how can we fix it?  

Most of the repairs are pretty common: broken jaws, broken blades, screwdrivers. The team is very fast at diagnosing and repairing these issues. We also sometimes find things the customer probably didn’t notice.

We make sure each tool fully meets all our requirements for functionality and performance before we return it, so sometimes we’re tweaking jaw springs or touching up a can opener that hasn’t been used for years.   

Once in a while, there are cases that have really interesting damage, or a failure mode we haven’t seen before. We’ll usually replace tools that aren’t repairable and share really interesting cases with engineers.  

Top three maintenance or “don’t do this” tips for Leatherman fans to keep their tools out of the warranty dept?  

The requirements to make a good knife are very different than making a prybar. Don’t pry on things with a knife.     

Basic things like pocket clips, wire cutter inserts, strap cutters are often removable, and user installable. We can send you these parts without you having to send in the whole tool if you prefer, just call or email Customer Service.   

If you are going to send your tool in, make sure you package it securely. We receive torn letters that probably used to contain a customers’ tool – it's a bummer for us and the customer.   

One of the defining elements of the warranty program is the strong feelings people have for their tools. Some folks are reluctant to be separated, to the point where they delay sending it back. I don’t know if there’s a question in here, but it really speaks to the strong relationship our fans share with their tools.  

We see it all the time, and it’s a big part of why we offer Sentimental repairs. We’ll make sure we keep as much of the original tool as possible while making it perform correctly. We want to keep all those special tools out there working and not have our customers be afraid to use them.

What percentage of tools are marked sentimental? Is there a particular memorable piece of art or message you’ve seen on a tool that’s come in for repair?  

~5%. We see all sorts of interesting personalization done to the tools. Sometimes by hand, sometimes with a laser engraver, and often from our Custom Shop. We try very hard to retain anything that makes a tool unique, we will resharpen and buff components and clean them if it’s feasible. 

One suggestion for customers that will send in tools in the future – use the text fields in the warranty submission form to describe what’s special about your tool to you. It will help us repair the tool in a way that you’ll be happy with, especially if it’s something not obvious.  

Thanks, matt!

To learn more about how to send in your tool for service, visit our Warranty Page.

For more interviews with the teams behind the tools, head over to our blog to hear more From Our Engineers.