[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.

[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).

[gotoeleven]

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

[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.