Bong Suh, President / Junho Suh, Founder / John Roberts, GM

Thanks for visiting Adhesive.com, the online home of SmartAdhesives. We're a California-based, family-owned business, which has been manufacturing specialty adhesives for almost forty years.

We created Adhesive.com to make purchasing adhesives as easy as...well, almost everything else you buy online. We've incorporated the standard features of the best retail e-commerce sites into Adhesive.com so you can research, compare, and buy our adhesives with ease. We've also taken our expertise, gathered from decades of serving large manufacturers and military-spec customers, and put it into this website so you can select the perfect adhesive for your job.

We know people just want to find what works and begin to test or to use the adhesive as fast as possible. No hassles. No fuss. That's why we carry all our products in stock, offer multiple shipping options, and stock useful accessories. Also, no minimum order is required.

Because we manufacture all the adhesives we offer, we know our products intimately. Got a question? Great! We love talking about our adhesives. Give us a call or try our online chat during business hours (8:30am-6:00pm PT), or send us an email anytime (we are rather obsessive about email, so don't be surprised if we answer back after hours!).

Want to know more about us? Click to learn about our history and backgrounds.

Glueless? We can help.

The story of our company requires telling the story of my father...

Starting Small

Junho Suh emigrated from South Korea to the United States in the 1950s, following the Korean War, to pursue a PhD in organic chemistry. He worked for many chemical companies, first as a chemist and then in sales. Then, in the early 1970s, he decided to follow his dream of running his own business. With a few thousand dollars in savings, he rented a small office, assembled a modest staff, and began to sell high-quality adhesives.

With some luck, hard work, and a lot of help from friends, Junho won a small government contract. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. Today, Junho Suh's enterprise operates from a 100,000 square-foot factory near downtown Los Angeles. Since those humble beginnings, he's produced more than 65 million gallons of adhesives and coatings for satisfied customers all over the world.

An Unanswered Need

For many years, my father fielded calls from motivated people asking for adhesive help. A surfboard company needed a clear adhesive to assemble custom boards. A cabinetmaker wanted flexible, water-resistant glue for repairing refrigerated units. All kinds of businesses called, each with a unique problem. My father always tried to help. But often the solution required making custom formulations that could not be prepared economically for only one customer. He wished he could help more, and hoped to one day make specialty adhesives more accessible.

A New Approach

So, several years ago, I proposed that we take my e-commerce experience, match this with his adhesive expertise, and begin to offer specialty adhesives in sizes and formulations suitable for all kinds of uses, from automated assembly to small repair jobs. This meant offering a broad variety of products, eliminating minimum orders and middlemen, shipping within 24 hours, providing practical accessories, offering technical support, and – most importantly – creating a simple, easy-to-use website. That's how Adhesive.com was born. My father’s one condition was even though we were "sellling through the computer" we would continue to conduct business in the old-world way: providing great value and personal service.

We hope you take advantage of our knowledge and expertise to solve your adhesive needs. Let us know what you think. And thank you for coming to our site.

Sincerely,

Bong Suh

Junho Suh, Founder

With more than fifty years experience in the manufacturing and selling of adhesives and sealants, Junho Suh combines an entrepreneur's energy with a lifetime of adhesives experience. After an early career with companies such as North American Aviation (Boeing), Stauffer Chemical, Dutch Boy Paints and Avery Corporation (Avery Dennison), Junho founded STIC-Adhesive Products Co., the parent company of Smart Adhesives. To this day, he spends his time in his research lab, searching for the “perfect" adhesive: one component; strong initial tack; environmentally friendly; and incredibly strong. (Check out our IQ Glue, which is the closest yet to his ideal.) In addition to being chief chemist, CEO, and COO of Smart Adhesives, Junho Suh is also our top technical support specialist.

Bong Suh, President

An e-commerce veteran, Bong Suh realized that the Internet and adhesives were an ideal union. Acting on his father's desire to make specialty adhesives more widely available, he set to work bringing his father's knowledge and experience online, allowing people to locate the right adhesives for their projects, at their convenience. This is how SmartAdhesives was born.

Bong has extensive experience in e-commerce, including as CEO of BuyDirect.com, and SVP of Corporate Development for CNET and Beyond.com. Bong has advised dozens of e-commerce companies as a board member or a strategic adviser.

John Roberts, General Manager

An experienced product developer, John Roberts brings operational expertise and a passion for making overly complicated things simpler. Prior to Smart Adhesives, John served as VP of Product Development for OpenDNS, a networking services company. He has also led product development and business operations at CNET, and built the first websites for The Atlantic Monthly and Fast Company.