People are holding onto their cars longer, which means more money spent on repairs. That's great news for Snap-on, a company that's been cranking out high-end tools for mechanics for over a century. "Vehicle repair is one of the great businesses," CEO Nick Pinchuk told a visiting dignitary this week. "Everybody's got to get their vehicles repaired. The garages are humming."

That dignitary was Austan Goolsbee, president of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, who dropped by Snap-on's Kenosha, Wisconsin headquarters to figure out the company's secret sauce. "Customization is why they get paid a premium and how they still manufacture in America," Goolsbee observed, presumably while not using a Snap-on tool to taste any actual sauce.

Snap-on makes 85,000 different tools, each one tailored to some specific annoyance in the lives of people who fix cars, airplanes, or even rocket ships. "Our philosophy is to be at the point of work, observing it, and figuring out what are the most sticky tasks," Pinchuk explained. "And then using those insights to create a tool which will make it easier. People will pay for this."

Indeed they will. Snap-on tools are not cheap, but they save mechanics time. The company's 3,400 franchisees roam the land in custom vans, visiting nearly a million mechanics every week, hawking wrenches and offering credit. Snap-on makes 80% of what it sells in the U.S., so tariffs are someone else's problem. Its 15 U.S. factories are so flexible they change models multiple times a day.

Snap-on has also deliberately avoided selling to do-it-yourselfers. "If there's a rule in Snap-on that's irrevocable, it's that Thou Shalt Not Sell to Do-It-Yourself people," Pinchuk said, because it would undermine the brand's cachet. The strategy has bred such fierce loyalty that some mechanics have their ashes stored in miniature Snap-on toolboxes. That's dedication you can't buy at Home Depot.

For Goolsbee, whose Fed district includes the nation's highest concentration of manufacturing, the visit was a lesson in how domestic manufacturers can specialize and prosper even in uncertain times. "They scratch a very, very specific itch," he said. "This is where productivity growth comes from."