[Stuart]

Welcome to last year's news.

They declared bankruptcy in October, sold off Craftsman to Stanley Black and Decker last year, and signed a deal with Amazon.com to sell Kenmore appliances.

The latest news is they secured another $350 million in financing yesterday, which will keep them in operation for a while longer.

Stanley Black and Decker is in the process of revitalizing the Craftsman line, they've already introduced new tool boxes and are planning on bringing at least some of the tool manufacturing back to the US.

[mgarblik]

In the world of tools, there are three huge players now that have the vast majority of the brands we are all familiar with. Snap-On has 25 brands plus their own. The Stanley Black and Decker group has 20 brands including MAC tools and Craftsman. (OP Topic) The Apex Tool group is also huge having 36 brands plus all the brands acquired from the Cooper tool group recently purchased. Chances are virtually all the hand and power tools we have in our shops fall to one of these big three. Harbor Freight stuff excepted.

[dataway]

I've recently decided that I'm going to go with SK tools. Supposedly exclusively made in the USA. Although I'm pro-USA when it comes to products, that's not the reason. From what I have read SK is presently one of the best tool makers in the world.

Tools are a cost/benefit situation for the average/new mechanic, right now I have the money to buy the best, that was not always the case, so I don't fault people that buy what they can afford, and what works for them, I did it for many years .... and to be honest, right now, I just like to see a name on my tools that have the same concern for quality as I do.

Dang shame that I can't go to Sears anymore and buy a quality tool, used to be that easy.

[mgarblik]

It's funny you would mention SK tools. Old time company and a competitor with Craftsman, back when they were not Chinese crap. As you can probably tell, I am a certified tool junkie and have a lot of hand and power tools from many manufacturers. SK has a long and storied past, being bought and sold half a dozen times. Through it all, they remained American made and of very good to excellent quality. Their most recent bankruptcy in 2010 was a little upsetting. They were bankrupt for only a few days and were bought by Ideal Tool Group. I had probably 30 broken SK hand tools and they had the same lifetime warranty as Craftsman. When I tried to return them for replacement, they tried to play the same game GM did when they went out of business for a few days. I got the , "that was the Old SK", and we are the new SK tools. Sorry about your warranty. After a class action lawsuit and judgement, SK, (Ideal Tool) once again began honoring the old SK warranty for life and all my broken tools were replaced. They did the right thing and I therefore support SK and the fact that their tools are still made in the US. Parent Ideal Tools has some real high quality stuff under their wing. Fluke meters and Klein tools among them. Interesting titbit: Back when Craftsman tools were a quality brand, SK made many of the hand tools for the brand. Another quality tool company, Easco also made Craftsman tools as well as Husky before all the business went to China. If you look at ratchets, wrenches and sockets from today and 30 years ago, the Craftsman tools have no resemblance and functionality to the old quality tools they used to sell. Sears can't go out of business fast enough as far as I am concerned.

[dhcarguy]

Are the Snap-on line Blue point made in the USA???

[mgarblik]

The answer used to be yes. Now, you have to look at the individual tools. Most Snap-ON branded tools are still US made, but not all. One example and very disappointing is a Snap-On aluminum 3 ton floor jack. Pretty expensive and when I got it, it was Made in China! It's a piece of crap by the way, lousy wheels, droopy hydraulics, just like all the Chinese hydraulic crap. Especially disappointed because Snap-On owns Blackhawk and I would have thought it would have been a better piece. Apparently, lots of the Blackhawk branded stuff as well as Omega, also owned by Snap-On is also Chinese. Blue Point has more import stuff in their line-up too. Some domestic, some imported. Unfortunately, paying big bucks and looking for a top brand name is still no guarantee. It's rough out there if you truly want quality.

[GT182]

I miss going into a store to buy S&K tools. A 3/8ths socket set was my first tool set purchase back in 1972. I still have that set and it's lasted better and longer than any of the Craftsman tools I've bought. I just can't find them anymore. And they're even hard to find at flea markets. No matter what broke S&K would replace free of charge with no hassle, unlike Sears.

[craigs69]

I just got word that the Sears Hometown store in my hometown will be closing. The owner is a longtime acquaintance of mine who took over the store a year or two ago.

Here is the post that he put on Facebook last night.

We wanted to celebrate with you about more improvements at our store and the fact that we qualified for the 4th quarter of the year to be awarded Premier Store Status, The best the store has ever performed with the best people ever!
However it is with heavy hearts we are announcing that the decisions of the corporate entities have decided to close our store.
We thank everyone for opportunities to serve our community.
All we have to offer is the liquidations of the remaining merchandise at awesome prices!!

This just sucks. I hate to see someone who put their heart and soul into making this store what it is, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.

[Fullsize455]

Originally Posted by craigs69

I just got word that the Sears Hometown store in my hometown will be closing. The owner is a longtime acquaintance of mine who took over the store a year or two ago.

Here is the post that he put on Facebook last night.



This just sucks. I hate to see someone who put their heart and soul into making this store what it is, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.

It's not like he went in thinking everything was alright with Sears and that he was somehow going to right the ship. The writing hasn't just been on the walls for years, its been broadcast over the loudspeaker system in every store continuously during store hours for years. I'm quite frankly shocked that there are still some stores left.

[craigs69]

Originally Posted by Fullsize455

It's not like he went in thinking everything was alright with Sears and that he was somehow going to right the ship. The writing hasn't just been on the walls for years, its been broadcast over the loudspeaker system in every store continuously during store hours for years. I'm quite frankly shocked that there are still some stores left.

He has been stating for the last month or so that the Sears Hometown stores were separate from the parent company and wouldn't be affected by the bankruptcy. Either he has been misinformed or he has been in denial. I am not at all versed on how the Sears Hometown model is structured, so I cannot comment.

[The Champ]

I'd have to say that buying into a Sears Hometown Store in the last few years is like boarding the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. It was still floating, but it was pretty obvious that it was going down.

[dataway]

To me Sears is one of the most egregious examples of long term mismanagement that the world has ever seen.

They were literally in the cat bird seat when the internet was in it's infancy and they were incredibly remiss in ignoring the potential. They already had a giant mail order business in operation, they already had a huge, organized ordering system and catalog, they could have been poised to be one of the first huge retail internet powerhouses in the world. But they stuck to their old model in a changing world. They could have put their catalog on the internet and beat just about every retailer in the country into the modern retail landscape ... they could literally have been Amazon today if they were not entrenched in the old retail models.
Just a shame, a wasted opportunity of monumental proportions. All they had to do was move from print to internet ... they did eventually, about 15 years too late.

[Stuart]

Sears isn't the only example. Montgomery Wards is another retailer that met the same fate from not keeping up with the Internet, and don't forget newspapers and all the revenue they've lost from their classified ads.

As far as that goes these aren't the only examples in history of companies being left behind by technology - it's happened in the past and will certainly happen again in the future. Who knows, something totally new may come along and take over Amazon sometime down the road.

[SR-71]

Buying Sears was the worst business deal K-Mart ever did. K-Mart was in fantastic financial condition until buying them.

[Ben M.]

Originally Posted by craigs69

Either he has been misinformed or he has been in denial. I am not at all versed on how the Sears Hometown model is structured, so I cannot comment.

They built a brand new shiny Sears Hometown 2 years ago in my town and shuttered it after it had been in business less than 18 months. I can't imagine anyone would go into a Sears related business and think things would improve, the only thing that's held them off from closing is occasional cash infusions via financing, but that's just adding more debt to a problem that has no real solution to resolve itself. I can't even imagine there are many more lines that Sears owns that are worth investing that kind of cash into a failing business to own when the doors ultimately close for good (Craftsman having already been sold out) unless somehow Sears still owns a large real estate portfolio that will be available for the pickings.

It's not so much technology and the internet taking them out, it's having a valued product people are willing to buy AND not accumulating loads of debts through acquisitions and mergers of brands that are struggling. Combine that with the glamorous and glitzy executive officers who have no idea what makes a company profitable long-term, investors looking for what they can tangibly benefit from or sell off, and the "quarterly profits at all costs" mentality it's quite difficult to keep a Sears or a Montgomery Wards afloat. It takes an executive group and investors willing to stay in for the long haul who KNOW the business, not merely make a few hundred million for themselves in 6 months and dump the rest.

My mom had bad Sears experiences back in the late 1980s so we never really appreciated or enjoyed our time there. oPh's story is an almost mirror of mine around 2002-2003 with my Craftsman tools, after time I never bought a single thing from them again.

[72GTOMN]

The last time I shopped at a Sears I just remember how inefficient it was just trying to check out. I'm sure I was waiting at the register longer than the rest of the shopping I did. Yesterday, I placed an order on Amazon. I couldn't find a particular product at my local stores. Took 10 seconds to pull it up on Amazon and 5 seconds to place the order. The price was cheaper than at a store and the shipping was free. Brick and mortar stores can't compete with that.
On the tool side of things, mark me as a Harbor Freight fan. As a nonprofessional, hobbyist they are good enough for my needs.

[Sirrotica]

I swore off Sears about 1977, and haven't bought anything in there since they wouldn't replace a breaker bar I brought in there to have replaced, or repaired. I haven't spent a dime there since.

Even then they were out of touch with their customers and their needs and their brands were going to hell that far back.

Previous to the breaker bar fiasco I bought a pair of snow tires from them and blew out 3 of them while still under warranty. Three strikes and you're out, demanded my money back and had a helluva hard time getting it back. Signs all over their stores "100% customer satisfaction, or your money refunded", BS.

It's a shame that gross mismanagement killed a once valued American institution. The cash cow is down to a hoof, the meats done been picked clean.

HF now has a pro line that is at least worth bringing home now, they're getting away from the one use wonders. They also are selling fairly high end welding equipment that can compare with Red (Lincoln) and Blue (Miller) mainly because Miller and Lincoln is making their welders in China too. I guess HF finally decided people would rather pay a little more to get away from the one use tools they were selling almost exclusively. You can still purchase the crap lines, but there are alternatives at least. BTW, HF offers lifetime warranty on their hand tools too.

I'm good with the Stanley tools Wally World sells, they are made mostly in Taiwan, which usually has better quality than mainland China stuff does. Most of my Snap On and Mac tools were stolen years ago and I've been slowly replacing them with Stanley or Husky which is made mostly by Stanley for HD.

[mgarblik]

Originally Posted by dataway

To me Sears is one of the most egregious examples of long term mismanagement that the world has ever seen.

They were literally in the cat bird seat when the internet was in it's infancy and they were incredibly remiss in ignoring the potential. They already had a giant mail order business in operation, they already had a huge, organized ordering system and catalog, they could have been poised to be one of the first huge retail internet powerhouses in the world. But they stuck to their old model in a changing world. They could have put their catalog on the internet and beat just about every retailer in the country into the modern retail landscape ... they could literally have been Amazon today if they were not entrenched in the old retail models.
Just a shame, a wasted opportunity of monumental proportions. All they had to do was move from print to internet ... they did eventually, about 15 years too late.

This may be the quote of the decade on the forum. Soooo true! BTW, their website and ordering system NEVER made it to the modern internet standards. Even as of a few months ago, it was super slow, difficult to search, difficult to navigate and order. A high school computer science student could have developed a better web site. It's almost comical how poor it is. Amazon is so smooth, easy for anyone to use, order, track, resolve a dispute. Just like Dataway said, this could have been SEARS.

[Big Injun]

As a member of the Strategic Sales team for KCD (Kenmore, Craftsman & DieHard), I read this post with interest and laughter. I can say with certainty, the iconic brands will continue on, but the retail storefronts will never be what they once were.

[64speed]

There is a kid (I say kid cause he’s a lot younger than me) who moved his wife and kid down here from Pennsylvania to buy a sears hometown store about three years ago. I worked there for about 3 weeks right before my disability kicked in and the reason I didn’t stay is it was obvious the other staff members didn’t give a ****. The whole store always looked like a wreck and the kid was constantly flustered. Plus Sears was always changing up sales so a tool marked 19.99 might ring up 9.99 one day and then 8 hours later after the register update it might ring up 24.99. I never understood how appliances could drop and rise hundreds of dollars in a week and still stay profitable. The store is shuttered and I haven’t seen the kid in a longtime. We used to talk about our time on the job because he had left a pensioned job in Pennsylvania as a police officer to come to S.C. to become a store owner.