MADISON, Wis. (BRAIN) — Trek Bicycles has announced that it is the first North American distributor of Unior Tools, which are made in Slovenia. The agreement was first announced at Trek World last month.
Initially, Trek is looking to Unior to help set up Trek Certified Service locations. Unior offers a wide array of hand tools as well as tool boxes, benches and workstands, all made in-house at the company's factories.
Unior has hired industry veteran Bruce Fina as its director of North American sales. Fina, a co-founder of Pedro's USA who also works with Kinetic and other brands, said that Unior may appoint other North American distributors in addition to Trek the future. While this is the brand's first big push into the U.S., in the past several U.S. distributors have carried some Unior tools, as well as the company's pedal thread inserts.
Unior was founded in 1919 and supplies components to BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, and other auto makers. The company has five factories and 2,500 employees and offers a total of 5,500 tools across all its categories.
The company provides the official tools for the Trek Factory Racing MTB, Movistar, and Etixx-Quickstep teams.
"Their highly demanded quality and expertise can now be appreciated throughout North America through Trek's network of premium retailers," Trek said in an announcement Wednesday.
In other markets, most Unior tools have blue handles. Because of trademark concerns with Park Tool, the tools sold in the U.S. will be colored differently, Fina told BRAIN.
