Posted on 01/05/2017 8:00:47 AM PST by Leaning Right
Sears Holdings will sell its Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker for about $900 million, the companies announced Thursday.
The deal will provide another cash infusion for Sears, but it comes at a cost — broadening distribution of the well-known brand gives consumers one less reason to choose to shop at the struggling Hoffman Estates-based retailer.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
You just need a new set of work gloves that have L/R interchangeable stamped on them. :0)
Husky or Kobalt are far superior now to Craftsman tools. Back in the 70’s Craftsman was THE tool brand to own. Now it’s just Chinese die cast junk.
Craftsman hand tools were once a quality brand, with a lifetime guarantee.
Somewhere along the way Sears started calling EVERYTHING "Craftsman", like cheap lawn equipment that came with NO guarantee, in contrast to Craftsman hand tools that came with a lifetime warranty.
Also in the last few years they've been selling "OTC" (Other Than Craftsman) hand tools, which are junk. I bought a set of Sears non-Craftsman ratchet wrenches about a year ago and two of them didn't live thru the first use, they literally just fell apart. I didn't even bother to go ax for my money back, I just threw them in the trash and said I'd never go back to Sears.
Also manufacturing got moved out of the US. I've seen posts here where someone who seemed to know said that the company that HAD been making Craftsman tools for Sears is now making another brand of tools for another well-known outlet. I forget the particulars.
Anyway, yes, it's the end of Sears. They may as well sell off the Kenmore brand too now and just shut 'er down. At this point they'd be missed about like... like... what was the name of that book store... started with a B...
So who wants to own a really cool skyscraper in downtown Chicago?
Yep. They should focus on those two brands and let other inventory go. Ultimately it is an image problem IMO that Sears is struggling with. If Sears can't find a way to get young people into their store they are screwed.
They had the same problem Kodak, IBM and other behemoths of the fifties and sixties had. They’d been so successful for so long that they just could not envision that ever changing, and thus didn’t see the need to change until the rug had already been pulled out from under them. And, not only that, but the entrenched bureaucracy built up over the decades was so calcified that it couldn’t do anything differently even after the belated recognition that they were in trouble. You can spot the lumbering, consensus executive group-think decisions littering the past, possibly the “right” thing to have done in a muddled way, a decade too late.
That’s the end of Sears.
The Bristol mall, IIRC is on the “dead mall” liist.
CC
“If all these brands are crap, are any quality brands left? And if so, their names please.”
I have found that Milwaukee power tools are a cut above the rest. And they have been very innovative in bringing out their newest line of battery-powered tools. As for hand tools, Husky (Home Depot) is made by the company that used to make Craftsman (before Sears moved that brand to China). And of course, if you are a professional and can afford them, the Snap-On brand of hand tools is tops.
“A friend of mine was thrown off a ladder, about 8 feet when he was chain sawing a tree limb in his yard and it kicked back. Had to have some braces put in his neck....................”
Reminds me of two friends hunting snakes at night with a gun and cigars on a boat in their small lake (maybe beer too).
Sometimes combining items seem to be begging for an emergency room visit.
Thanks, that's the info I was looking for.
If Klein Tools makes it, it’s probably the best. Of course, $50 pliers ought to be the best!
Goodbye, Sears, and good riddance.
For that reason alone it will never make it into the MSM level of reporting.
Hopefully Trump's reign will change some of these things permanently.
Suppose Sears had done this instead. Make Craftsman (and Kenmore) top-of-the-line brands, of the highest quality. No cheap parts. No shortcuts. Only the best.
And offer free 15-year warranties on everything...on tools, on washing machines, on microwaves, etc.
Of course that would make everything more expensive, maybe by 25%. Would that work? I think so. Not every consumer is looking for cheap junk.
Black & Decker makes Dewalt. They sell the hell out of them.
The market never make sense. The Market Makers know they can sucker people into buying small shares and cover their winnings.
Fact is, Sears hasn’t had anything but AA executives for more than 10 years and they have wound down the company.
Koddak, Jeppesen, Sears, et al., have failed to make the digital transformation required.
I worked with Sears Wishbook years back in the 1990’s when they were told of the Amazon model long before Amazon was even created. They walked away from it. Walked away. They had idiots that wanted “a customer service experience” instead of “get money, deliver product”.
That reminds me of the one where a home improvement contractor whose ancestors came from a certain eastern European country had hired an apprentice.
He started the kid off nailing siding to a house. After awhile, he noticed the kid throwing some of the nails down to the ground.
"What the hell are you doing, throwing those nails away?"
"Uh, sir, those ones had the head on the wrong end".
"Well duh, kid! You use those ones on the other side of the house!"
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