About Us

Lee Valley is a family-owned business that has been serving users of woodworking and gardening tools since 1978. Our reputation is based on three principles:

Customer satisfaction: Any product may be returned within 3 months at no cost to the customer; we return every penny you paid us, plus, for shipments within North America, we will refund your return parcel post costs.
Integrity: Our product descriptions are truly what we think of the product; sometimes this means saying such things as: "...handle with hardwood scales complete with spots of wood filler. A tough, ugly tool that is perfect for the person whose usual solution is to use a larger hammer." We let you make good decisions by giving you accurate descriptions.
We treat the customer like a friend. We do everything for you that we would do for a friend, including, where necessary, telling you if you are being unreasonable. Nobody is on commission here and there are no minimum sales targets built into anybody's job description. We have found them to be in conflict with good advice. Besides, most of you will spend as much money with us as you can afford so we want to give you good advice, to give you the best value and thereby guarantee ourselves a low rate of product returns. It is best for both of us if we get it right the first time around.

We listen. If you want us to change something or to carry another product, let us know; we may not end up doing what you want but we won't ignore your comments. We have had a lot of good advice from customers over the years and appreciate it. We also get some bad advice; the trick always is in being able to tell which is which, something we are still working on.

About one third of our total sales volume is in products of our own design. The vast majority of these are Veritas� brand products made by Veritas Tools Inc., our manufacturing arm. We have a research and development team of 11 people and 130 more in manufacturing. And, to reinforce the part about listening to customers, we have a number of customers earning royalties on products that we manufacture based on designs received from them.

Whether a tool from Lee Valley is one made by Veritas Tools or is one of the 5000 or so we get from around the world, it will always have our full guarantee. That means it costs you nothing to try us out. We're confident that the quality and service we provide will be to your liking. Just give us the opportunity.