Freeman
Manufacturing & Supply Company
History
| Our
company was born in 1902 when Bill Freeman, owner
of “Freeman Pattern Shop” in Maumee,
OH, began re-selling materials to other patternshops
out of his storage room. He did so well with his
side business that he moved it to Toledo and renamed
the operation “Freeman Pattern Supply”. |
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In
the mid 1950’s Gerald R. Rusk, a former warehouseman,
took over and grew the company by acquiring a manufacturing division
and some smaller suppliers around the country. It
was during this time that Freeman became the operation
we recognize today. This string of nationwide distribution
centers would contribute greatly to the future success
of the company and establish the “Freeman” name
as a major supplier to our industries. The locations
at that time were Toledo, Newark, Chicago, Houston,
Fort Worth, Milwaukee, and Springfield (Mass). |
| Upon Mr. Rusk's passing in
1974, his son
took over the business and ulitmately appointed Lou Turco as
President in 1983, a position he still holds today. After moving the headquarters
to Cleveland, OH in 1984, he also relocated a few of the branch
locations and further streamlined the organization. During this time, the company also expanded its manufacturing to include tooling plastics and continued to broaden its
line of product offerings to further solidify their reputation
as a “one-stop-shop” to the pattern and
tooling industries. |
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| Since the late 1990s, Freeman
Mfg. & Supply Company has made several major investments in its future, starting with the construction of its current headquarters
in Avon, OH in 1998. In 2007, Freeman went international when it acquired MF Composites, a Montreal-based supplier. And most recently, in 2011, Freeman completed the largest acquisition of its 100+ year history when it purchased the pattern supply and specialty wax divisions of The Kindt-Collins Company. |
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Freeman
now services its North American customers with ten
U.S. and two Canadian locations, plus dozens
of authorized distributors of our products both
domestically and worldwide. While the traditional patternshop supply business remains deeply at our core, Freeman is now also a major supplier to a much wider range of customers, including those that
do automotive and aircraft tooling, modelmaking,
rapid prototyping, jewelry manufacturing, vacuum forming, high performance composites construction, injection molding,
metal stamping, and much more.
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