I don't know what HF sold in the 60s-70s, or anything about their business practices, but the tools in the 80s were not junk and not 4X overpriced. I paid $35 for a SAE 1/4, 3/8, 1/2 socket sets, with ratchets and extensions, and used them professionally for years - full and part time. These are the ones that came in the metal boxes and were probably copied from SK. I still have them and they're still perfectly functional; these are not the $5 **** sets that you would see at flea markets- maybe that's what they sold in the 70s, dunno. A set of HF impact sockets was $7-10 at that time- high quality Taiwan made. I still have the receipts! and in 1987 it was Harbor Freight Salvage Co; in 1990 it was Harbor Freight Tools
Correct. It was son Eric Smidt who moved his father away from the telemarketing model. They began selling to the general public, first with thin mail order catalogs printed on newspaper stock (I believe they first distributed them as advertising inserts in newspapers). They even diversified into the hat business for a short time in addition to the tools. They first had only a single outlet store in the L.A. area where they sold off the returns they got from businesses in the telemarketing operation. This would have been the only outlet at the time where the general public could buy direct from HF. They shipped the telemarketing tools out on 30-day billing (they were not pre-paid or COD), so if you weren't a business with vendor credit references you would never have been called. Eric expanded the retail approach, opening retail stores like the ones people are familiar with from the 80s. Eric also began to move away from the total junk tools as well, especially since they were no longer paying 42% commissions to telemarketers, and the market had changed so there was a lot more imported tools on the open market to compare and compete against. There's at least one article online that refers to HF's early telemarketing days, but as you can imagine, they don't publicly discuss the dirty details of the time--you'd have to have been part of that scene from the time to know about it. In the thread I mentioned, I praised Eric for what he did with his Dad's company, which is what drew the most hater heat. I provided the info as a means to record it for posterity and for the benefit of GJ members (the vintage tool section on the forum is very big on company and tool history). I wasn't writing a fiction fantasy piece that I made up as a way to throw a piece of raw meat to a pack of wolves, just a first-hand account from someone who was on the inside of that tool telemarketing era. Folks are free to believe it or not. Some don't want to think of HF that way, some don't like to see Smidt as an innovative and highly successful entrepreneur whose vision ultimately changed the face of the tool industry.
I've just made these comments on this thread as a response to OP's quote form an HF store manager, because I actually know where the "freight" part of the name came from (if you think about it, why
would a tool company have FREIGHT in its name???). If you believe me, fine; if not, that's OK too. But my intentions were not to hijack this thread into a love/hate Eric/HF thing, so I hope it doesn't go that way. If it does....sorry, OP.
