Eric L. Smidt was born in Los Angeles, California in 1960 to Allan Smidt and Dorthy Smidt. His mother had multiple sclerosis and his Father, overwhelmed, sent him to an orphanage when he was nine. Four years later he went to live with an aunt in Tennessee, returning home after two years but moving into his own apartment on his 16th birthday. He graduated from Grant High School in Van Nuys, a public school in Los Angeles. In 1977, as a teenager, Smidt started Harbor Freight Tools with his Father in a small building in North Hollywood, California. Originally known as Harbor Freight & Salvage Co., the company began as a mail-order tool Business. Eric introduced the company's defining innovation of cutting out the middleman and began to obtain tools directly from the factories to the customer.
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