Craftsman conumdrum, Sears vs. Stanley?

[Jeff T.]

I saw an article in the Omaha World Herald Monday morning relating the rollout of the new Stanley, Black & Decker line of Craftsman tools available at Lowes, Ace and a few other vendors. In reading a few more articles on the subject, I believe there is an odd quirk to the sale of Craftsman to Stanley. Both Sears and Stanley now manufacture and sell Craftsman tools, Sears makes, or somebody makes Craftsman tools for Sears and Stanley will make Craftsman tools for everyone else. I hope I misread or misunderstood the series of articles I read today because having two vendors/manufacturers, one with no money to update their products and the second willing to spend money to update the product is a prescription for disaster.

Jeff T.

[garyash]

Here’s the story at Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craftsman_(tools)

[52-fan]

Brand names are almost impossible to trust anymore. The names/companies get sold so often you never can tell what the quality will be. Once the original builders of the brand are gone, the whole issue is the integrity of the next owner/operator. Look what happened to Studebaker.

[garyash]

And here is who owns 36 of the other tool brands we have long known:

http://www.apextoolgroup.com/

For many years, Danaher Corporation had a division that made many of the wrenches and ratchets for Craftsman/Sears, but sold off the tool business in 2013 when Apex was formed.
Some history: http://www.apextoolgroup.com/news/ap...d-bain-capital

[jnormanh]

Some years back I was in the Danaher plant just up the road in Gastonia. That plant made only sockets, no end wrenches, no handles, no extensions, just sockets. By the millions. They were making Craftsman, SK, Snap-on and some other brands I can't recall. The different brand names had different decoration, such as knurls and lettering, but they were all the same as far as materials, manufacturing methods, heat treatment.

Some of those may now be made in China, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are not as good. The Chinese can and will make any quality the buyer wants. It's just a matter of cost.

[wittsend]

Buy a name, manufacture off shore, hype the product based on the past quality..., not the present, dazzle with new product so as to make the buyers forget recent purchases, sell company a few years down the road absolving warranties ... . So, yea, digging through a tattered box at a swapmeet for old (quality) Craftsman tools never looked so good.

I have a number of 70's/80's Taiwanese tools I’ve picked up for $0.25 to $1.00 at swapmeets and they seem like quality tools compared to a lot of name brand stuff available today. Many even as good as my (quality) Craftsman tools. For a lot of people today “tools” means a case cracker and a tiny Phillips screwdriver.

[Jeff_H]

The Sears in Fargo was closed last year. I later found out the mall management would not renew the lease rather than that particular store was otherwise going to close with all the others around the country. There is 1 Kmart store still open and they have 1/2 aisle of Craftsman and Stanley hand tools. This summer, part of the store space was converted to have Sears Kenmore appliances and bed mattresses. I happened to be in there yesterday to get some Purolator oil filters (only place I know to get them) and wandered around a bit.

[rodnutrandy]

I worked at Parts Plus for 19 years , we sold Challenger/ Proto , lifetime warranty . May be missing the right store , I can find no one that sells Challenger/ Proto now , so much for lifetime warranty

[rodnutrandy]

Our Walmart in Hillsboro , Ohio has Purolater filters , think Advance auto also has them .

[hausdok]

Proto Tools

http://www.protoindustrial.com/en/Pages/default.aspx?utm_content=prototools_aerospace&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=proto_-_brand-s&utm_term=proto%20tools#

If memory serves, Emerson, makers of the Ridgid brand of tools, made Craftsman tools for decades.

As far as I can tell, the quality of the mechanics hand tools sold at Harbor Freight today is every bit as good as the Snap-On, Mack and Craftsman tools I made my living with 45+ years ago. I'm absolutely certain that they are light years better than the typical Chinese-made Globemaster tools of 45+ years ago. Since I haven't bought but one or two additional Snap-On, Mack or Craftsman tools over the past 45+ years, I can't really say whether the quality of those brands has gotten better or worse. The Chinese are keeping pace with us step-for-step in advanced technologies; so it makes sense that, as long as the quality of the raw ore they are using to produce steel, or the steel they import, is on par with what we are using here, and the manufacturing and heat treating, etc. is the same or better, that they'll be able to produce tools on par.

Wasn't always that way though. In 1991 in Iraq I found an undamaged fully functional Chinese Type 531 command track out in the desert just a few miles west of the Kuwaiti border. It was probably about ten years old - maybe had been used Chinese equipment sold to the Iraqis - I dunno. Not sure how the Brits had missed it when they swept through that sector blowing up anything they could, but it was intact with all of their command crypto radios - and some rudimentary night vision gear. I spent a few hours going over it looking for booby traps, found none, got some jumper cables from the motor sergeant, jumped it and then drove it more than 40 miles off the battlefield to our position at the Iraq/Saudi border. The thing had a German-built six cylinder engine which was the only quality thing about it. The rest of it, compared to our military equipment at the time, was clunky, crudely manufactured and antiquated.

I recently read in Janes how the Chinese military has been on a modernization kick over the past couple of decades. Now their main battle tank armament, fire control sophistication, main gun, etc. is supposed to be on par with our M1A1/2 Abrams. Russia too! A lot of their armament industries privatized and modernized after the soviet union meltdown and now those companies are producing weapons on par with ours. None of their stuff was on par with ours during my military career. Looks like there have been some big strides made over the past 22 years.

Yeah, as long as we're all using the same modern tech and methods to produce "stuff" it's going to be basically the same regardless of country of origin.

[556063]

This article discusses one reason Sears is in so much trouble, that hasn't been mentioned much. I was lucky enough to get a personal golf cart tour of the Chrysler Kokomo Transmission Plant by the Plant Manager about 1986. The dealership I worked at sold his family their cars. I asked him what his biggest problem was, being fresh out of business school in 1985. He told me in 1986, the obligation to past retirees for the plant exceeded then current payroll. Definitely, this could be a factor for Sears:

https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/14/news/companies/sears-pension-retirees/index.html

[8E45E]

Brand names are almost impossible to trust anymore. The names/companies get sold so often you never can tell what the quality will be. Once the original builders of the brand are gone, the whole issue is the integrity of the next owner/operator. Look what happened to Studebaker.

That is very true in the faucet market. Brands like Moen and Grohe both have less expensive "builder grade" lines which are not manufactured in their home countries. And the lack of quality does show in places on them.

Craig

[8E45E]

This article discusses one reason Sears is in so much trouble, that hasn't been mentioned much. Definitely, this could be a factor for Sears:

https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/14/new...ees/index.html

Sears Canada retirees are taking what's left of the company to court: https://business.financialpost.com/n...ension-deficit

Craig

[556063]

Sears Canada retirees are taking what's left of the company to court: https://business.financialpost.com/n...ension-deficit

Craig

I have a close family member that spent over a decade at GM as a white collar employee. He received a letter in 2009 that the pension benefit had been annulled, without recourse or lump sum settlement. It wasn't a large pension, but he was glad he left GM before he got into the same mess some of his older co-workers that lost huge pensions have to contend with.

This story has never been heavily publicized. It makes the Studebaker Pension story that spawned the Public Benefit Guarantee Corp. look like child's play, simply because of who set the rules for the Pension Plan in motion during "Bankruptcy".

This will be interesting to watch, as things may still follow more common sense in Canada.

[DieselJim]

And there is Honeywell that terminated the retirees health insurance.