2ndGearRubber said:
It doesn't work that way. They're not going to have buyers cherry-picking what they want. All the lots sold will be "all or none" deals.
Those bidding on them will be wholesale liquidators - I've dealt with some of them in the past.
They couldn't care less about what it is - it's just widgets - and one widget is the same as another. They are concerned only with one thing: finding a buyer as soon as possible.
I about 6 to 8 months, you'll see the stuff appearing in tool liquidator retail outlets.
Judging from the likes of SK, Armstrong, Pratt Read, etc. the hand tool business is a tough business. It seems that smaller (undercapitalized) domestic manufacturers are simply unable to compete.
No one except Stanley and snap-on is making any real money in the USA hand tool market, heck if you include apex and greatstar that's probably the hand tool market et all, (Matco parent company Vontier lost 380 million last year), and basically, every other OEM has been forced to sign contracts with basically net-zero profitability. Between retailers controlling product shelf and the margin destruction at the hand of the house brands, and the fact that there are essentially zero motes in this business, excepting patented technology which cost so much to invest in that unless your one of those four its basically impossible to really make a run at. Plus in the meat and potatoes of the industrial hand tool companies, which are not retail sales but large business to business sales where you outfit an entire company it's really really hard to compete with the fact that snap on and Stanley will do everything in one go including in Stanley's case air and electric tools, which makes negotiating 100 different contracts for wrenches, ratchets, sockets, etc usually not worth the purchasing teams time which if you went with most of the other players would be required, SK fell victim to the crushing amount of cash it requires to get to the scale where you can compete for those contracts. essentially if you are not a small specialist like wright (24 million annually, 123 employees (600 something skews)) who does a relatively low volume operation making select products selling through places like McMaster carr and Granger, and doing a decent enough amount of retail sales, and is privately owned and probably not throwing off a huge amount of cash. You need to be at the scale of someone like proto (450 million annually) who sells products made out of consolidated facilities which all for even greater scaling. Basically between their lies the valley of death in which tools, SK, and Armstrong (Pratt and Ried was killed by the OEM business having no margin).
Sure small businesses who dominate one category almost exclusive sub 50 employees, and sub 25 million in annual revenue, these tend to do decently well for their owners who make a good living, supplying the big industrial and tool trucks companies. Its a lot like running a franchise in that there is money in it but its a lot of relatively low margin money, and after you calculate the cost of capital, labor, materials, depreciation, there's usually something between 100-300 grand leftover in the top quadrant and basically nothing at lowest quadrant.
Wilde and Wright keep their product lines short and don't tend to move into new areas quickly and don't try and play for the big industrial contracts, their certainly sustainable solid business largely because they have avoided the valley of death between themselves and the big players, which so far no one has found a way to do but every few years someone convinces themselves they can doAll that notwithstanding, they are still in business, they're in the black, and their employees are getting regular paychecks.
Many of them have been in business a long time, being very good at what they're doing.
Certainly their CEOs are probably not pulling down annual incomes of seven or eight figures, but they're also not becoming pawns in the corporate acquisition/merger meatgrinder, out of which come very few winners and far too many victims.
Wright will most likely do just fine. They're very good at what they do, and they don't try to be something else, nor do they try to be all things for all people - one of the mistakes made by far too many defunct American tool manufacturers.
Wilde seems to have finally come to their senses and is focusing their energy and efforts on items they make in house, and make very well, and they've dropped dozens of items from their product line they were outsourcing from other suppliers.
Proamerica is rolling right along, selling a tiny bit of its output to the consumer, but the majority of it to other companies.
There's a list of tool manufacturers around here somewhere.
Sometimes it's fun to scroll through it to see who's still making product and shipping it out.
Let's not take that too far for obvious reasons.They want out of Illinois? Why?
I suspect the move is mostly due to Great Star already owing a facility in Pennsylvania. I doubt anyone would move a manufacturing/warehouse operation to either Illinois or Pennsylvania if starting from the ground up. As a business person it would make more sense to move to one of the southern states that are more business friendly.They want out of Illinois? Why?
Well said
