You’ve come to the right place.

I had an interesting conversation with one of our customers recently. In the course of remodeling his kitchen, he needed to replace the knobs for his cabinets as the original knobs on his 1948 Saint Paul kitchen were dated. The old knobs worked just fine of course—they had been doing their job faithfully since Harry S. Truman was president. 

So my customer went to a big box home supply store, picked out a pack of polished bronze knobs, took them home, and installed them. They were easy to install, looked nice, they seemed to work fine, and everyone was happy. 

Until one day six weeks later when my customer pulled on a knob a little too hard and the polished bronze piece came off in his hand, leaving behind an unsightly little nub. Over the next few weeks seven more of the knobs broke, leaving him with a very odd looking kitchen and an exasperating situation. 

There’s no warranty and anyway it’s not like he wanted to replace them with the same thing. So he threw them away and bought a set of kitchen knobs from 1950 on eBay in the style he liked. He installed them and they are working fine.

The moral of this story is that many objects made now are built with “planned obsolescence.” If your vacuum continues working for 20 years, how is the company to sell you a new one? And if they built the thing to last it would cost a little more, meaning (so the thinking goes) they may be less likely to sell it in the first place. 

We believe in doing things the old way. Sure our mats cost a little more than some of our competitors … but you’ll only have to buy them once. We believe that crafting a superior, made-to-order product with durable, heavy duty materials is still a good way to run a business. 

Our business grows because our customers are so excited about the quality of our mats that they tell their friends and family and buy our mats for their home and office, not because they buy a new mat every year. 

Is this old fashioned? Maybe. But we think you’ll find it refreshing.