Lowes?

[Eric C Stoltzfus]

So I went to Lowes today. I wanted to get some jigsaw blades and a few other things. They were completely reorganizing the tool section to make room for all the new craftsman tools. My jigsaw uses the U type blade. They didn't have any of that style blades. I also couldn't find any Stanley tools. What is wrong with you guys?

[Dan Baginski]

I went to Home Depot last week to buy a can of minwax wipe on poly. Apparently they don’t carry the minwax brand anymore. It’s all varathane now. And they stopped carrying bessy clamps too and replaced it with dewalt.

[Art Mann]

If Lowes marketing people think that "Craftsman" will be perceived as a premium brand in the same league as Dewalt, Bosch, Milwaukee, Makita or even Hitachi, they may be disappointed. I certainly don't see it that way. I consider them to be similar to Ryobi at Home Depot, but higher priced.

[marlin adams]

I went to Home Depot last week to buy a can of minwax wipe on poly. Apparently they don’t carry the minwax brand anymore. It’s all varathane now. And they stopped carrying bessy clamps too and replaced it with dewalt.

Minwax being phased out but there was plenty of the bessy clamps.

[Gary Ragatz]

I live here in rockwall and went to home depot today and they had plenty of both.

Not sure about Minwax, but my local HD has plenty of Bessey clamps in stock.

[Doug Garson]

Looks like Art beat me to it. It will be interesting to see how Craftsman sells at Lowes. It's been years since Craftsman was seen as a quality brand. I'm surprised Sears was able to sell the brand and that it just didn't die with them with so many better options out there. Still have lots of Craftsman tools in my shop, none of them less than 20 years old, most even older.

[marlin adams]

But from what I understand is the Home depot is phasing out minwax so get it while you can. This is from the paint dept supervisor.

Minwax is owned by Sherwin Williams. We arent carrying them, Purdy brushes or Cabot stains iirc because they are a competitor. Also SW signed an exclusivity deal with Lowe's

[John Sincerbeaux]

Have you guys ever heard of AMAZON?

[Frank Pratt]

Can't say I'll miss Minwax. Their stains are particularly bad.

[Greg Parrish]

Local HD here has phased out minwax under same reason Marlin indicated.
They also phased out most of the German made Bessey clamps and carry mostly the Chinese versions now

and Craftsman started dying as a brand as soon as they off shored all the hand tools from USA made to Chinese made. I bought a bunch of items when they were Dumping the USA stock at clearance prices so they could replace with the made in China packaged version. Dumb. Quality went down. The replacement warranty became useless. Etc.

[John TenEyck]

No Sealcoat Shellac at my local HD either the last two times I've been there. It's still listed on their website, but not in store.

John

[Bill Orbine]

Oh I don't know.... I thought Lowe's is making a pretty good push with the Craftsman lineup. I thought the looks was very appealing though it was strange to see a Red/Black lineup inside a Blue/White store. I think they will do well with that even though they're no match for Snap-On.

[Donn Ward]

Regarding Minwax, I won't fall on my sword for their stains, but their wipe on poly is, IMHO, far superior to the WATCO brand. I couldn't find Minwax poly at HD or Lowes so I purchased WATCO. It took 24 hours to dry and it didn't flow out as smoothly as Minwax. I was able to find Minwax at ACE Hardware so I purchased a couple of cans...It went on smoothly and dried within a couple of hours, so I could apply multiple coats in a single day.

[Gary Ragatz]

Local HD here has phased out minwax under same reason Marlin indicated.
They also phased out most of the German made Bessey clamps and carry mostly the Chinese versions now

and Craftsman started dying as a brand as soon as they off shored all the hand tools from USA made to Chinese made. I bought a bunch of items when they were Dumping the USA stock at clearance prices so they could replace with the made in China packaged version. Dumb. Quality went down. The replacement warranty became useless. Etc.

The Bessey bar clamps I bought at HD a few weeks ago were made in Germany. The pipe clamps were made in China. Both seem to perform well, so far. No reason I can think of to assume up-front that a Chinese-made product would be inferior to a German-made or American-made product. Making a pipe clamp, or a c-clamp, or a hammer isn't exactly rocket science. I don't need to go to a gourmet restaurant to get a good hamburger.

[Bill Dufour]

HD has no bare root trees this season. Lowes one small load and that is it for the season. Hard to believe they have abandoned the market here in the central valley. Commercial growers here only sell semi loads of trees. But they sell world wide.
This county is something like 75% of the North American almond production. Over 95% within 30 miles. Billions of dollars and many other fruit trees grow well here. Not like they were trying to sell trees that would be hard to grow here.
Bil lD

[Jim Becker]

Regarding Minwax, I won't fall on my sword for their stains, but their wipe on poly is, IMHO, far superior to the WATCO brand. I couldn't find Minwax poly at HD or Lowes so I purchased WATCO. It took 24 hours to dry and it didn't flow out as smoothly as Minwax. I was able to find Minwax at ACE Hardware so I purchased a couple of cans...It went on smoothly and dried within a couple of hours, so I could apply multiple coats in a single day.

Donn, you can get the Minwax product from any Sherwin Williams store. It's their product.

[Doug Walls]

I thought Lowe's is making a pretty good push with the Craftsman lineup.
I think it's a good thing also!

Sounds like Stanley-Black & Decker are trying to bring the USA-Made Craftsman quality back.
http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/entry/stanley-black-decker-aims-to-give-craftsman-new-life-by-bringing-production

It took a few years of poor quality Craftsman brand products to mess things up, So it's probably going to take some time to get things right again.

Doug

[Nick Shattuck]

I wonder why the big box stores don't try to stock all levels of tools, including the high-end tool brands like hilti, Festool, Knipex, Wera.. hell, even Woodpeckers. It's like if Best Buy wouldn't stock Apple products because they are too expensive.

[Dave Sabo]

I wonder why the big box stores don't try to stock all levels of tools, including the high-end tool brands like hilti, Festool, Knipex, Wera.. hell, even Woodpeckers. It's like if Best Buy wouldn't stock Apple products because they are too expensive.


Because they don’t sell well enough to warrant keeping invemtory on the shelves in thousands of stores.

Lowes and Sears in my region used to carry Knipex tools. They didn’t sell many. Nor do they run the kinds of businesses that need to draw you in with the “fancy” tools in hopes of selling off them sending you out the door with the “value” tool. So carrying them is not a useful marketing expense either.

The name of the game at BORGs is inventory turn. Good looking expensive widgets just sitting on the shelves is not good for the bottom line.

[Curt Harms]

I wonder why the big box stores don't try to stock all levels of tools, including the high-end tool brands like hilti, Festool, Knipex, Wera.. hell, even Woodpeckers. It's like if Best Buy wouldn't stock Apple products because they are too expensive.

Most big box customers wouldn't know anything about Festool, Wera etc. beyond that they are overpriced. Some customers would, but not enough.

[Frederick Skelly]

Because they don’t sell well enough to warrant keeping invemtory on the shelves in thousands of stores.

Lowes and Sears in my region used to carry Knipex tools. They didn’t sell many. Nor do they run the kinds of businesses that need to draw you in with the “fancy” tools in hopes of selling off them sending you out the door with the “value” tool. So carrying them is not a useful marketing expense either.

The name of the game at BORGs is inventory turn. Good looking expensive widgets just sitting on the shelves is not good for the bottom line.

+1. I was about to say pretty much the same thing. The rapid turnover is part of their big picture business model. I know a hardware store that tried to sell Festool. In a year, they sold very little of it and dropped the brand. (Though I heard somewhere that there is a brick and mortar hardware store behind Hartville Tool and it sells a ton of festool and has a wide variety of "lesser brands". If that's true, maybe their business model is different than a BORG.)

[kent wardecke]

Online shopping has changed the retail store. Fewer choices, higher prices. for instance, you run out of jigsaw blades and need to finish your project you'll take what they have. If you have 2 days you'll order Amazon or some other outlet that carries 99 types of jigsaw blades

[Jim Becker]

"Big Box" is also not the sales model for certain brands because of the level of service/support/inventory required to carry the lines as well as constraints on pricing. Many of the "top" brands do not permit discounting, either. Festool, for example, has stringent requirements around all of these things and mass market is not a good fit for that.

[Dave Lehnert]

If Lowes marketing people think that "Craftsman" will be perceived as a premium brand in the same league as Dewalt, Bosch, Milwaukee, Makita or even Hitachi, they may be disappointed. I certainly don't see it that way. I consider them to be similar to Ryobi at Home Depot, but higher priced.

People in this group my not think of Craftsman brand as premium but I would be willing to bet the average homeowner, that the big box store caters to, still look at it as a top brand. I am going to bet it will be successful for Lowes.
What ever one thinks of the Craftsman brand, Good or bad, kinda has to set that aside and look at each tool now with a different eye. Since Craftsman is now a brand owned by Stanley/ Black and Decker (DeWalt) most tools are totally different so the past is irrelevant.

[Bill Dufour]

Since they sold the brand and make them in China it no longer applies but. Say five years ago I could go into a big box store and they had some invented brand names and some old names that have nothign to do with the original quality products. The Craftsman name meant it was made in North America and was a reasonable quality. It would not fall apart in your hand under load and injure you. Those other brands?
There is no good way to look at a tool and know if the steel is properly alloyed and heat treated. For that confidence your only choice is to rely on a brand name and decide that a lifetime guarantee means they put some effort into making decent quality or the returns would bankrupt them. Since someone bought the craftsman name they have to honor the existing lifetime guarantees since that is part of the "good will" they paid for.
Bill D

[Jim Becker]

Bill, I strongly suspect that it's been a very long time since the Craftsman named tools en-masse were made largely in North America, even when Sears was still muddling through.

[Damon McLaughlin]

I purchased a Dewalt cordless drill and driver set two years ago and have had nothing but problems with the drill (both used in a home/hobby environment). I finally sold the set and replaced it with a new Craftsman drill/driver set two months ago and I couldn't be more happy. Plenty of power, long life on the batteries and they charge very quickly. Build quality appears to be pretty good too.

The sales person at my local Lowe's said that Stanley-Black and Decker makes the Dewalt (high end), Craftsman (middle) and Black and Decker (lower end) tools. He said that coming soon they will be carrying the Craftsman hand tools with lifetime warranty. He didn't state if Craftsman would be replacing the Kobalt name but I have noticed my local store stocking less and less Kobalt items on the shelves.

[Doug Dawson]

Bill, I strongly suspect that it's been a very long time since the Craftsman named tools en-masse were made largely in North America, even when Sears was still muddling through.

According to the wikipedia article on "craftsman", they were all(?) sourced in the USA until 2010, but I remember seeing the China label on some of the mechanics tools at least 5 years before that. I have lots of Craftsman mechanics tools from the 70's and 80's, all American-made of course. They were well into the 90's. They always subcontracted. It was never in the same league as Snap-On, but it got the job done, and the warranty was great, particularly for ratchets. The stuff being made now is not quite the same quality as Kobalt, which I hope Lowes is not supplanting. The hot ticket today is GearWrench, better than Craftsman ever was.

[Richard Coers]

According to the wikipedia article on "craftsman", they were all(?) sourced in the USA until 2010, but I remember seeing the China label on some of the mechanics tools at least 5 years before that. I have lots of Craftsman mechanics tools from the 70's and 80's, all American-made of course. They were well into the 90's. They always subcontracted. It was never in the same league as Snap-On, but it got the job done, and the warranty was great, particularly for ratchets. The stuff being made now is not quite the same quality as Kobalt, which I hope Lowes is not supplanting. The hot ticket today is GearWrench, better than Craftsman ever was.

We may be having some confusion here with the word "tools", between mechanic tools and woodworking tools in this discussion. Back in the 90s, nearly all machinery was made by Emerson. Sears also started marketing Companion mechanic tools as a cheaper Chinese made choice. Don't know when mechanic tools started being outsourced.

[Doug Dawson]

We may be having some confusion here with the word "tools", between mechanic tools and woodworking tools in this discussion. Back in the 90s, nearly all machinery was made by Emerson. Sears also started marketing Companion mechanic tools as a cheaper Chinese made choice. Don't know when mechanic tools started being outsourced.

Craftsman never actually made anything. _Everything_ was outsourced. The mechanics tools were last made by Danaher, but it fluctuated (and Danaher was sold.) Companion was always junky.

You never knew quite what you were gonna get. Kind of like Kenmore.

But goshdarnit, whoever was responsible, I thought they made great lawnmowers! Based on a sample size of one every 15 years. Start every time. Everything else I ever tried was trash in comparison.

[Justin Horne]

Have you guys ever heard of AMAZON?

You get outta here what with your newfangled interwebs, snapbook and tweeter.

[Doug Dawson]

Most big box customers wouldn't know anything about Festool, Wera etc. beyond that they are overpriced. Some customers would, but not enough.

Plus, it looks too much like Ryobi to attract any attention. ;^b

[lowell holmes]

I will give the Lowes Craftsman tools a try. They might be quality and I will not know without buying a tool and using it.

[Jerome Stanek]

I remember getting Craftsman batteries for my Pro Black and Decker drills the 1940 series that was the top of the line back in the 90's. went to a B&D service center and seeing a weird color 1940 drill and asked about it they told me it was a Craftsman that B&D made for Sears. Batteries were half the price so I picked up about 6 as I had 7 drills.

[Dave Sabo]

As mentioned , Stanley owns Craftsman. They didn’t pay Sears close to a billion dollars for the name because they were feeling nostalgic or charitable. They also know a thing or two about marketing tools to “we the people” at lots of different price points. It’s also quite possible that Lowe’s is just along for the ride on this (though I have no info to substantiate this )

Hartville has one retail store while the Depot and Lowe’s have over 2000 each. It’s an entirely different merchandising exercise.

[Frederick Skelly]

As mentioned , Stanley owns Craftsman. They didn’t pay Sears close to a billion dollars for the name because they were feeling nostalgic or charitable. They also know a thing or two about marketing tools to “we the people” at lots of different price points. It’s also quite possible that Lowe’s is just along for the ride on this (though I have no info to substantiate this )

Hartville has one retail store while the Depot and Lowe’s have over 2000 each. It’s an entirely different merchandising exercise.

So it's true then Dave? Hartville Tool is backed by a local store?

[Dave Sabo]

So it's true then Dave? Hartville Tool is backed by a local store?


You can can click the “about us” tab on the website and read all about it.

They are are not unusual in this regard. ToolNut, Highland Woodworking, ACME, and a few others with big web presence have a retail store behind them. Maintaining a single location and a website is much easier than the logistics of keeping thousands of 100k sq. ft locations stocked and staffed and profitable.

[Rich Engelhardt]

So it's true then Dave? Hartville Tool is backed by a local store?yep great place to spend a few hours walking around with a gaping jaw! :D :D https://www.hartvillehardware.com/

[Frederick Skelly]

Dave, Rich,
Thanks. All I can say is "Holy Cow!"
That's one heck of a hardware store!
Fred

[Jim Andrew]

Menards has both the Minwax and Varathane products. Lately they have been selling quarts of Minwax finish with a 3$ rebate. Limit 4 per rebate. I quit buying gallons as do not use it up fast enough, and the cans leak air and the finish skins over. Quarts work for me. If you want wipe on, just thin down the regular stuff.