This however buys them time to survive past July, which was in question with suppliers backing out and them hemorrhaging cash. They needed to make it until the end of July before bankruptcy to keep the SEC from launching an investigation regarding the loans/collateral offered by Lampert.
Kenmore is next...
SOMEBODY needs to investigate Sears management. I'd have figured that would fall to the stockholders. Thus the problem of major investors running the company--no-one can stop the trainwreck. The investor/manager makes money from the destruction and plundering of the company.
A few possibilities:
1) Apex Tools makes many foreign Craftsman tools. Stanley drops Apex, and starts making those same items in the USA.
2) Western Forge makes many USA Craftsman tools. Stanley drops WF, and starts making those same items on their own in the USA.
3) WF continues manufacturing USA Craftsman tools for Sears, but Stanley makes new versions of those same items to supply other retailers.
Stanley delivers a blow to their competitors (Apex and Ideal and maybe some others) by depriving those competitors of the Craftsman manufacturing business (at least once the contracts in place expire). How they position the brand is anyone's guess. The optimists on this board could envision a hole in the Stanley product spectrum, at least for hand tools, that would be a competitor to S&K (though as S&K's pricing goes up, Proto starts to look better).
I am more concerned for the myriad of smaller suppliers (Wilde Tool, Lang, Imperial/Stride, Vaughan & Bushnell) for whom the Craftsman brand was their major, sometimes sole, vessel into the broader consumer space and Stanley Black & Decker will quickly identify overlap with. This is going to be a massive loss for Western Forge and parent company Ideal Industries.
I think this is very bad news for the current group of Craftsman suppliers. I hope Ideal and the rest of them have long-term contracts. I'd hate to see Ideal sell to Stanley.
What they do with snow blowers, lawn mowers, drill presses, planers, ect. is anyone's guess.
Sears sold only the lawn power tool name in Craftsman, Sears still has the Craftsman hand tool name to sell
The way the news article was written in my hometown paper, it seems that Stanley mostly wants the lawn/garden side of Crapsman. The hand tools was merely a bonus I don't know how Stanley will handle the lawn/garden side of the business, but I'm sure it will involve cheapening the line some more as soon as the existing contracts are over. They'd better be creative. When I went shopping for a snow blower, all Sears had was unmitigated junk. And that was ten years ago. (I bought an Ariens.)
Now is the time to buy up all the chinese craftsman for pennies and swap it out for USA made after the takeover is complete.
Hopefully, this will mean that when I break the Chinese made replacements Sears gave me when my original USA pieces broke, will be USA again.
Yeah...right. Stanley has a reputation of offshoring and cheapening all of it's brands. Even Mac and Proto aren't what they used to be. You think they're going to push Crapsman upmarket?
Interesting to note that my local Sears store for the last 6 months has been undergoing a large scale expansion / upgrade, including adding on floor space and switching over to all LED lighting and solar panels on the roof and all new touch screen computer check out terminals and customer price check displays, and a big 'we're hiring' push. They have signs at every entrance detailing all the upgrades and say that they've hired over 100 people so far and are still looking for more.
You'd never know the troubles Sears is having at that store.
We can hope that the store is just plain successful. My suspicion is that they've hired 100 part-timers who know nothing to replace thirty full-timers with viable experience.
Of course, I could be wrong. Sears probably doesn't have thirty full-timers.
I don't see Stanley suddenly give the consumers higher quality at equal or lower price. Too high end, Craftsman will jeopardize Proto and Mac. Too low end, Craftsman will end up replacing the garbage at Walmart. Either way, there will be some changes, so we better ****** all the good stuff currently offered by Craftsman (like the pry bars).
Not a bad examination. Thanks for that. "All the good stuff" would be what? About six items? Maybe?
If I wanted "USA made with foreign parts" drill, I would just get a DeWalt drill. I have no interest in Craftsman power tools especially if I can't have the same accessibility as the network of Home Depot and Lowe's.
I remember when Black and Decker was a respected name. They drove it into the ground, then had to position Dewalt as the "premium" line...which they then drove into the ground. Crapsman will be no different.
Stanley will screw this up like they have previous brands. Stanley should stick to Tape Measures. Dewalt is no longer "trade" trusted. Just bought Irwin and Lennox from Newell and have already screwed that up. Does anyone remember what they did to the Goldblatt and American Brush brands? As a Manufacture's Rep I like this because they'll put Craftsman in the grave that Sears has already dug.
Yes. Stanley/Black and Decker cannot be trusted. Well, they can be trusted to ****-up a formerly good brand name by driving it downmarket.
When I was a kid back in the 60s, dad used to drive us to Simpson Sears... ....Back then, if you wanted tools, you went straight to Simpson Sears and bought Craftsman stuff (made in the US of course).
I spent some time in Winterpeg, MB about fifteen years ago. Went to the Simpson Sears, and was surprised--and strangely pleased--to see Craftsman tools made in Canada. Tool boxes, too, if I'm remembering right. I thought it was so nice (and appropriate!) that Canadian customers bought Canadian products, while American customers got American (and the beginnings of offshored junk) products.
My take on this: Sears sold Craftsman on "fire sale" terms to avoid problems with US Government investigations into management methods. Apparently, Sears has to survive past July. You can expect the other two names--Die Hard and Kenmore--to suffer the same fate if the cash gets tight before then. This has been planned-for for years, which is why the only three brand names Sears had with any value were pushed into a separate subsidiary corporation. How much would anyone pay for the Evolv brand name? Thirty cents?
Stanley Black and Decker will not care for the hand-tool business any better than Sears did. They wanted the Lawn/Garden segment, and took the rest as a package deal. Stanley has a piss-poor reputation; that reputation will exactly predict what happens to Crapsman: Unless the US Government tightens the screws on ****** imports, Crapsman will continue to be ****** imports with a "
MADE IN USAusing crappy ChiCom subassemblies" decal stuck on them. Stanley will make loud noises about USA production, but in terms of sales volume it will still be nearly-nothing. A 40% increase from near-zero is still near-zero.
Crapsman is still screwed. But it'll be available in more locations. Yay.
