[jackhack]

"a low-price tools brand"

Excuse me, but what? The Craftsman brand historically was a consumer premium brand, priced midway between tradesmen premium brands like Snap-On and consumer "hardware store cheap tools" -- Craftsman was never a low-price brand. Craftsman used to stand for quality, with a lifetime no-questions-asked guarantee wherein, if the tool fails for any reason, it will be replaced. Period. No questions asked, no receipt required. Quality. And men proudly used their father's or grandfather's tools.

I remember well when Craftsman moved hand tool manufacturing from USA to China. Clearly cost of production was lower, but prices didn't change. The company could pocket the difference... and that's just how it went, at least until the consumer wised up and realized what was happening : a quiet substitution of Chinese-made cheap products but keeping yesterday's premium price. Cheap tool at top-dollar price. Tradesmen are not fools -- they know when their tools are not holding up, and they're being cheated. So the consumer rightly felt cheated and abandoned the brand.

Sears broke the contract, and quickly lost the trust. In just a few years, they destroyed one of the most trusted brands which took 100 years to build. The brand was sold off, and now it's just another meaningless string of letters. Today, Sears is dead and gone, for many reasons just like this. Good riddance.

[indymike]

> Sears broke the contract, and quickly lost the trust. In just a few years, they destroyed one of the most trusted brands which took 100 years to build. The brand was sold off, and now it's just another meaningless string of letters. Today, Sears is dead and gone, for many reasons just like this. Good riddance.

What actually happened: Sears got rolled up with KMart, eventually went out of business. Sears house brands like Craftsman and Kenmore (home appliances) were sold off during the fire sale at the end. Ironically, Sears was the Amazon of the early 1900s but became too invested in big mall stores. When the ecommerce boom hit, Sears had just closed down their catalog division.

[dismalpedigree]

What really happened is that Eddie Lampert engineered a financial bust out of both Sears and Kmart. Extracted billions and left the carcass of formerly great companies.

[indymike]

It's accurate that Lampert did engineer a bust, but it happened after Sears had missed the ecommerce boat. I don't think Lampert could have done the deal if Sears hand adopted the internet. The Lampert purchase happened in 2005. Sears shuttered the catalog business in 1993, and Amazon launched in 1994. Amazon started expanding into non-book product in 1998, and it was clear to the Sears universe that they had completely and utterly messed up.

[bmitc]

Just read about him on Wikipedia. It mentions:

> Lampert is a self-proclaimed supporter of free market economics and is a fan of libertarian writer Ayn Rand.

Big surprise there.

From another article:

> As Sears blew through its dwindling cash reserves, Lampert’s hedge fund made loans to the company money that were backed by the company’s assets, including real estate balances on Sears credit cards. That made him Sears’ largest creditor: Sears owes him at least $1.3 billion.

How is this even legal?

[indymike]

This is accurate.

[dessimus]

>Craftsman used to stand for quality, with a lifetime no-questions-asked guarantee wherein, if the tool fails for any reason, it will be replaced. Period. No questions asked, no receipt required. Quality. And men proudly used their father's or grandfather's tools.

This means people bring in 25, or 50 year old worn down tools, and Craftsman replaces them for free. While having to pay modern material and labor costs to replace a tool that was bought 25-50 years before. If that happens too much, it becomes a huge liability on the company. Hopefully the person walking in to replace a damaged or worn hammer or screwdriver decides to buy a set of wrenches while standing there, making it an upsell for Craftsman, but likely it didn't happen enough to keep them viable.

[bombcar]

Harbor Freight offers the same warranty now on their hand tools, and Home Depot on Husky's (Home Depot even did a promotion around the time Sears ended their warranty where they'd replace a craftsman tool with a husky for free).

The cost of the replacement is marketing at some point; replacing a obviously abused tool may be a technical loss but you've a customer for life; unless you betray them as Craftsman did (which is why people are still so heated about it twenty years later).

[dessimus]

But no one looking to seriously buy tools goes to Harbor Freight, expecting to pass that tool to their child or grandchildren. They go there to buy the crappy chinesium grade tool that gets a job done. If they find that they need the tool often enough, then they buy the heirloom grade one.

[gotoeleven]

The point is that they don't break or wear down. Have you ever held an old craftsman tool?

[dessimus]

They do when people (ab)use their tools, like use screwdrivers as chisels, chisels as screwdrivers, and anything metal as a hammer or mallet.

[jerlam]

I'm impressed that the Craftsman brand, without any manufacturing capability since it was all outsourced, and its reputation falling due to lower quality tools and its association with dying Sears, still sold for nearly a billion dollars.

[bombcar]

Even now it's probably one of the more recognizable brand names among "the general public" even if tradesmen and those in the know wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

[spiritplumber]

So the memetic inertia, by itself, with nothing to back it up, is worth $1B? That's frightening.

[bombcar]

You can troll bankruptcies to see what the brand goes for sometimes, I know someone bought the ToysRus brand and stuck them inside Macy's for some reason.