Global Fastener News

FEATURE

Doris Johnson and her husband Rennie Johnson at a 1994 WAFD meeting in Rancho Mirage, CA (courtesy Pac-West)

From the Fastener History section of GlobalFastenerNews.com:

November 11, 1994 FIN – Can one local fastener distributor get Congress to change government policy?

Without any training, Doris M. Johnson, president of Vancouver (Washington) Bolt & Supply, Inc., led a battle to get Congress to protect small businesses from a prohibitive loan prepayment clause.

It took 8,000 letters and three hours a day for three years, but on October 22, President Bill Clinton signed her bill into law.

Johnson offered the lessons she learned to the fastener industry at meetings of the Western Association of Fastener Distributors and the Fastener Industry Coalition this fall.

In 1984, Johnson took out a 25-year, $177,000 loan from the Small Business Administration (SBA) to move Vancouver Bolt to a new building. She didn’t notice a 50% prepayment penalty in the fine print.

When she sought to expand and refinance in 1991, she discovered the problem.

“You couldn’t refinance, expand, or sell the business without paying a loan shark prepayment penalty,” she complained. “You couldn’t do any transaction …. you couldn’t even die. The whole inventory I have so carefully tagged for traceability was worthless.”

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