About Us
Founded in 1973
Drill Doctor started as a member of the Darex family of brands. Darex has been creating sharpening tools since 1973 under the brands Darex industrial bit sharpeners, Drill Doctor professional and DIY drill bit sharpeners, and Work Sharp knife and tool sharpeners.
Darex began in 1973 in Beecher, Illinois. The D, A, and R of Darex are the initials of three generations of the Bernard family. Grandfather Arthur Bernard, who earlier founded the Bernard Welding Company, contributed his energy and guidance to David and his father Richard.
In 1978, Darex relocated to Ashland, Oregon, where it continues to reside. In 2012, Matthew Bernard became the fourth-generation family owner of the company.
What We Do
We are proud to design and assemble our tools in the USA. You work hard for your money, and your tools are an investment. We are dedicated to creating quality tools with quality components and backing them with the best customer service you’ll never need.
What we make is as important as where we make it. Southern Oregon is a beautiful place to live and work, and we strive to do our part in our community to reduce waste.
How We Do It
We design, engineer, and calibrate our sharpening machines all under one roof – also shared by our in-house customer service, sales, and admin teams. We source as many components from North American manufacturers as we can, and insist our over-sea suppliers meet stringent quality control metrics and share in our practice of creating a great workplace for their employees.
The tools we make support this mantra and as a company we believe in eliminating waste and using our resources, respectfully to their full potential. With that we recycle as much of our waste as possible including; corrugated, glass, aluminum, steel, other metals, and plastics. In addition, we have a 110kW solar power system on our roof providing over half of our yearly electricity needs.
OUR CORE VALUES
We are repeatedly voted one of the top businesses in Southern Oregon to work for. We believe this is due to our focus being not only on the products we make and sell, but also on our culture and the people we hire to be part of our team.
Many companies have core values, mission statements, and similar things, and many of them don’t use them. Here at Darex we use our mission and values as the central drivers of our business. By doing so we have created a unique, extraordinary business. It is exciting for us to get to share part of that with you through our products, our customer service team, or by working with us.
We hold each other in high esteem and are concerned about each other’s welfare. We treat others as we would want to be treated and embrace others for who they are.
You have a choice in everything! Accept responsibility for your unique experience, be proactive-if you don’t like your experience, change it.
Speak and live what is true for you, be yourself, keep your agreements and walk your talk.
Strive to simplify everything including our products, processes, personnel programs, and our message to our customers and co-workers.
Reach for our highest potential as people and as an organization. Challenge the status quo, embrace change, increase productivity and eliminate waste. Encourage and reward growth and risk taking and learn from our improvements and mistakes.
Have fun while working hard! Work to keep Drill Doctor an organization people want to be a part of. Strive for balance in our lives at work, home and community.