No, they are catering to their primary market, which is construction & DIY types, both of whom have more big bulky items to store.
I agree. Beyond this, I've started seeing this Dewalt stuff all over the place. It's smart because for better or worse people associate the name with high quality tools. At Canadian stores it looks like Taiwan Dewalt hand tools are at a 50-150% premium over the identical (looking) stuff with different branding. I guess it's all about leveraging the brand into as many segments as possible.
What I find strange is the redundant cross-branding. Hand tool brand wise (or at least the impression they are trying to make): Mac is king in automotive, Proto in Industrial and Dewalt in construction. Stanley is tier 2 pricing wise. That makes sense to an extent given the lineage/history.
For pneumatic nailers, etc., Bostitch is clearly their leading brand, with Porter Cable and Dewalt offering fewer models and less new/high end stuff. But they essentially replaced the Emglo brand with Dewalt for their "contractor" grade compressors, while Bostich and Porter Cable are mostly homeowner pancake units. You'd think the Bostitch brand would have been the top-line compressor mark of choice.
I've also started seeing Bostitch power tools lately. These are marketed a notch below Dewalt professional tools and I guess it lets the company compete without discounting the Dewalt brand. But I thought that was Porter Cables role? Below that they have the Black & Decker brand as well, along with Stanley Fatmax.
Are all these from the really necessary from the same company? Not to mention they compete with other brands and store-branded tools, some of which they make, no doubt, and also have several other models within some of the brands! (FYI 18v = 20v "Max") I'm not trying to say these are all the same, but it just feels like a lot of the options are somewhat artificial when the market is already pretty saturated. I suspect some of this is giving in to retailers that want exclusive products, but who knows
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