Thirty-three years ago, five friends sat down at a kitchen table in Tulsa, Oklahoma and decided to start a company. Among them: president of Maccor Andy MacKay and his wife Helen, who runs personnel. Today, less than a mile from that spot, Maccor now occupies 80,000 square feet of space and has earned itself a reputation as the top manufacturer of battery testing systems in the world.

Maccor is one of 9,000 American suppliers that Apple spent a collective $60 billion with in 2018, which supports 450,000 jobs. Altogether, Apple is responsible for creating and supporting 2.4 million US jobs across all 50 states, four times the number of American jobs attributable to the company eight years ago. Apple is on pace to directly contribute $350 billion to the US economy by 2023, which the company announced in January of 2018.

“The relationship with Apple has been tremendous and company-changing for us,” says Andy. “We want to build the absolute best equipment we can build — we don’t want to cut corners. Apple is a company where quality is paramount and they push us constantly to see if we can make improvements in our commercial product.”