It started as a repair shop — in 1915
Mosaburo Makita was twenty-one years old when he opened a repair shop for electric motors in Nagoya in 1915. For forty-three years, the company repaired and sold motors, transformers, and lighting equipment. Then, in 1958, it built its first power tool — a portable electric planer. Japan’s first. That single tool changed the trajectory of the company. Within a decade, Makita was the number one power tool manufacturer in Japan. Today it operates in over forty countries with ten manufacturing plants.
In Tacoma, Washington, a man who has been buying and restoring hand tools from estate sales is building a facility where the transition from hand tools to power tools is the second station in a five-station workforce progression. The tools on the floor of that building will include Makita products. The people learning to use them will be the next generation of tradespeople, fabricators, and inventors. The company that started as a repair shop is being asked to consider a building that starts the same way — restoring tools as the first act of training.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Makita holds rank fifty-two because it is the power tool company whose origin story most closely mirrors CrowdSmith’s. Both began as repair operations. Both made the transition from servicing equipment to building the systems that produce the people who use it. Makita’s tools will be on the floor of CrowdSmith’s Station Two. The company’s direct sales model — building close relationships with end users rather than relying on wholesalers — is structurally identical to CrowdSmith’s retail tool store philosophy. No geographic proximity (headquarters in Japan, U.S. operations in California and Georgia), but every jobsite within five miles of Portland Avenue has teal tools on it.
March 21, 1915, Nagoya, Japan. Originally Makita Electric Works — sale and repair of lighting equipment, motors, and transformers. Incorporated 1938. Renamed Makita Corporation 1991.
Mosaburo Makita (b. 1893). Founded the company at age 21. Son of a timber merchant family. Background in electrical engineering.
Headquarters: Anjō, Aichi, Japan. Makita U.S.A., Inc.: La Mirada, California. Makita Corporation of America (manufacturing): Buford, Georgia.
Over 40 countries. 10 manufacturing plants in 8 nations. 100+ sales offices. 350+ products. Approximately 12% of the global power tools market. Projected revenue of 700 billion yen (~$4.7B) for fiscal year ending March 2026.
Model 1000 Portable Electric Planer (1958) — Japan’s first. Within eleven years, Makita was number one in the Japanese power tool market.
First cordless drill: 7.2V rechargeable (1978), after ten years of R&D. First NiMH cordless tool (1997). 18V lithium-ion system (2005). XGT 40V max line (2020). The single-battery-platform philosophy — one battery powering an entire tool ecosystem — has been a core strategy since 1987.
Makita spent its first forty-three years as a repair operation. Motors came in broken. They left working. The company learned the inside of every machine it touched before it ever built one of its own. That sequence — repair first, then build — is CrowdSmith’s Station One curriculum. Donated tools arrive from estate sales and family attics. They are cleaned, identified, and restored. The restoration is the training. A SmithFellow’s first encounter with hand tools is not a lecture about metallurgy. It is a wire brush, a can of oil, and a tool that someone else gave up on.
Makita understood that the people who repair equipment develop an intimacy with it that the people who merely purchase it never achieve. CrowdSmith is building that principle into a credential system. Station One is the repair shop. Station Two is where the hand tools meet the power tools. And when the person at Station Two picks up a Makita planer for the first time, they already know what a planer does — because they restored a hand planer at Station One.
Makita credited its rise in the Japanese market to a unique direct distribution model. Instead of relying on wholesalers, the company employed its own sales force. The close relationships gave Makita insight into what retailers and end users actually needed, which fueled innovation. CrowdSmith’s retail tool store operates on the same principle. The person behind the counter is not a cashier. They are a mentor — a credentialed SmithFellow who can tell you what the unfamiliar tool in your hand does, why it was built that way, and what you could make with it. That conversation is the intake funnel. The tool store is the sales force. The relationship is the product.
Makita is the only power tool manufacturer in the UK to provide dedicated training and product repair facilities. Its Factory Service Centres train distributor networks, end user companies, apprentices, and trainees in trade industries. CrowdSmith’s five stations are an expanded version of the same model — except the training is not product-specific. It is trade-wide, AI-integrated, and credentialed. Every person who completes the CrowdSmith progression is a professional who knows how to use power tools, digital fabrication equipment, and AI — and who will buy tools for the rest of their career. CrowdSmith is not asking Makita for philanthropy. It is describing a market development opportunity: a facility that produces the next generation of professional tool users, in a corridor where no one else is training them.
| Dimension | Makita | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Electric motor repair shop (1915) | Tool restoration bench (Station One) |
| First product | Portable electric planer (1958) | Restored hand tools on retail shelf (Day One) |
| Distribution model | Direct sales force; close end-user relationships | Retail tool store; mentor behind the counter |
| Training | Factory Service Centres for apprentices and tradespeople | Five-station progression; five credential tracks |
| Innovation cycle | 10 years R&D before first cordless drill | 140+ AI dialogue threads before first facility |
| Market position | Professional-grade tools for the jobsite | Professional-grade training for the people on the jobsite |
| Founder age | Mosaburo Makita: founded at 21 | Robb Deignan: building at 60 |
Your company started as a repair shop. In 1915, Mosaburo Makita opened a business in Nagoya that sold and repaired electric motors, transformers, and lighting equipment. For forty-three years, that is what the company did — fixed things. Then, in 1958, it built its first power tool. A portable electric planer. Japan’s first. Within a decade, Makita was the number one power tool manufacturer in the country. The repair shop became the factory. The people who understood how machines worked became the people who built them.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I am co-authoring this letter because the project I am about to describe was built through sustained human-AI dialogue — the same methodology the project teaches. The letter you are holding is one of one hundred forty-seven being mailed simultaneously. Each was composed individually. None was sent before any other. A printed list accompanies this letter, ranking all one hundred forty-seven names by proximity to the mission. Makita holds rank fifty-two.
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a Wyoming 501(c)(3) developing a five-station Maker Continuum workforce development facility on a federally designated Opportunity Zone corridor in Tacoma, Washington. Station One is hand tools — donated tools from estate sales and family attics are cleaned, identified, and restored. The restoration is the training. Station Two is power tools — the transition from manual to mechanical, where a person who restored a hand planer at Station One picks up a Makita planer for the first time and already knows what it does. Station Three is digital fabrication. Station Four is supervised AI collaboration. Station Five is robotics and manufacturing proof for patent filings. Five credential tracks map to five roles on an invention team. The inventor keeps full ownership of everything created. No equity taken.
The front door is a retail tool store with free coffee. Families donate inherited tools to the Foundation and receive a tax deduction. The tools are restored and sold. Every person who walks through the door is a potential fellow, a potential inventor, a potential customer for the professional-grade tools on the floor of Stations Two through Five. The economic engine generates revenue from Day One. A 38-chapter operations binder, seven integrated financial models, and a 27-source grant pipeline govern the operation. All of it was built through the human-AI dialogue methodology — SmithTalk — that is taught at Station Four.
Makita credited its rise in Japan to a direct sales model — employing its own sales force rather than relying on wholesalers, building close relationships with end users that fueled innovation. CrowdSmith’s retail tool store operates on the same principle. The person behind the counter is not a cashier. They are a credentialed mentor who knows the history and application of every tool on the shelf. That conversation is the intake funnel. The relationship is the product.
This letter is not a philanthropy request. It is a market development conversation. CrowdSmith is building a facility that produces the next generation of professional tool users — tradespeople, fabricators, and inventors who will buy power tools for the rest of their careers. The facility is in a corridor where no one else is training them. Your tools will be on the floor of that building. The question is whether the company that started as a repair shop wants to be part of a building that starts the same way.
The documentation is public at crowdsmith.org. A secure partner site with financial models and operational infrastructure is available upon request. The man in Tacoma would welcome the conversation.
The Planer
The first Makita power tool was a planer. Before that, for forty-three years, the company repaired other people’s machines. It learned how things worked by fixing them. It learned what was missing by listening to the people who used them. Then it built the thing that was missing.
In Tacoma, a man is doing the same thing with a building. He learned how tools work by restoring them. He learned what was missing by watching people bond over the ones they loved and stare at the ones they did not recognize. Then he built the five-station facility that was missing. The planer was the turning point for Makita. The building is the turning point for the corridor. Both started with a repair bench.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation