Sears has been advertising their Mega Tool Sale, promising “up to 50%” savings on tools and tool storage this week. We took a look and found a couple of reasonably good deals, but most of the tools on our wishlist are either full-price or barely discounted.
We couldn’t find anything to get too excited over, but thought the sale was worth mentioning, just in case any tools you’ve been meaning to buy are included in the sale.
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Kevin
This is why Sears is failing. Their “mega” tool sale is nothing. They spend all that money on advertising and there is not one thing on sale that would attract me into the store or to purchase something off their web site. Add that to the list of things they are failing on.
Marketing – Fail!
Advertising – Fail!
Web Site Working – Fail!
Customer Service – Fail!
Quality – Fail!
Profit – Fail!
Management – Epic Fail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It really pains me to see them fall so far. I am afraid that the end may be near.
Stuart
I must disagree – the quality of many of my Craftsman tools, and some of the other tools I purchased from Sears is quite good.
Kevin
Their quality has been slipping recently. This really pains me since my garage is filled with craftsman tools. For example about a year ago I wanted to get a set of craftsman full polish professional wrenches. I ordered it from their web site. (I will leave out the LONG story of how they screwed up my order.) When I eventually received it, the wrenches were no longer USA made as the web site showed, but the machining on the openings was not good. The openings were rough, not smooth, and uneven. The chrome on the wrenches was not smooth. I returned the wrenches to my local store (yet another debacle).
Their quality had been really good in the past. Now it is slipping. It is not terrible, but it is clearly waning. I was probably harsh when I said their quality is a fail. Their quality is not the selling point it once was.
I agree, their warranty on hand tools is still very good and easy to get serviced. I have never had a problem getting warranty replacement for a broken tool.
Stuart
The warranty is still good, but Sears/Craftsman no longer make many of the tools I purchased in the past 5 years. If one such tool fails due to a flaw or defect, I can probably ask for a refund since an offered replacement would probably be a significant downgrade.
John
Another example. Looking at the C3 batteries. A single battery is $29.99. A twin pack is $64.99. Why pay $5 more when you can get them separately cheaper? What economists do they have working for them?
Stuart
I haven’t been following the price of C3 batteries, but I imagine that perhaps the twin pack goes on sale every so often. It might very well be $65 3/4 weeks in a month and $55 that last week.
But I have seen random pricing inconsistencies as well that leave me scratching my head.
Parke
I’ve never had any trouble with Craftsman quality and you can’t beat the warranty. It seems like if you have something you want to buy at Sears and just watch the website it will eventually go on sale for a day or two.
Colin
There are a few decent deals for this sale, although not everything is. Just like always, you have to look. If you’re only watching for a select few items, you might be disapointed.
Personally, I think sears is only failing at advertising and image. Their products are mostly still excellent. They carry the brands that I want. I never thought to purchase a TV from them, but when Best Buy was out of stock last year, guess who price matched them, and had it in stock, with better financing? Yep, Sears.
It’s a shame that everyone wants something for nothing anymore. I’m all for a good sale, and i’m all for USA made craftsman, but the lack of sales at the current pricing probably told sears that they couldn’t charge more, they simply had to outsource the tools.
I know i’m not a part of that problem. I own quite a bit of craftsman tools. So maybe you guys need to ask yourselves. “Am I part of the problem?”
Stuart
When a store advertises a “MEGA TOOL SALE,” I expect to see some good offers. When I clicked on links to “shop the mega tool sale” and “view these great deals,” I saw full-price items and pretty lousy discounts. Items that are on sale for 50% off at least once or twice a month were 5% off.
I keep an eye on many products, out of personal interest, and of a desire to share high-interest tool deals with ToolGuyd readers and others. Most of these items were “on sale” at higher than their average prices. I also saw Sears promoting a thin-profile ratchet set for $100 when the same set under a slightly different SKU was on sale for $90.
I personally found the sale to be utterly lackluster. But as mentioned, I don’t look at ALL the tools they carry, and thus was open to the possibility that there were great deals that I just wasn’t aware of.
Colin
Type in “Craftsman Module”.
There’s some 50% off deals there.
Stu, I wasn’t really refering to you, or any one particular person. Simply a general statement. Lets say it was 3 years ago. Craftsman was all USA. If you wanted a tool, did you go to sears and buy the quality item? or did you head over to Harbor Freight and purchase the cheapest you could find?
ToolGuyd Mobile
I went to Sears and bought USA-made Craftsman. Other times, Lowes, Home Depot, Amazon, and industrial suppliers. Only once did I buy the cheapest option – 24″ bolt cutters for a quick project.
AndrewC
I think at one time tools were made with professionals and serious hobbyists in mind. Craftsman didn’t have much competition and could produce quality products in large volume and make a good profit. Even if you didn’t need craftsman quality, you got it.
Flip to today, and Craftsman has a lot of competition. You have other professional tool brands (Snap on and others for automotive, and countless high quality woodworking manufacturers) being used by hobbyists as well as the pros, and you have all of these low quality tools that will do the job for most weekend warriors.
Craftsman is probably selling lower volume of tools and is being forced to compete with lower prices as well. Margins get squeezed. It wouldn’t suprise me if there quality slips a little, but I don’t know how much it affects the performance of the tools.
Stuart
I’m not totally convinced that competition is eating away at their sales. A couple of months ago, a market research firm said that Sears/Craftsman commanded a whopping 35% of the hand tool market. Presumably they were referring to the consumer hand tool market, but still, they were reported to have greater market share than Home Depot and Lowes combined.
In recent months, Sears discontinued most Craftsman Professional hand tools. Many of the mechanics tools, such as wrenches and ratchets, are now made overseas and are only described as “Craftsman” now.
A lot of the new tools that have been coming out are clearly designed for DIYers, homeowners, and more casual tool users. So it seems to me that Sears is dropping support for advanced users and “sophisticated hobbyists” in favor of consumers that go for the more inexpensive tools.
This might be a good strategy, but in the end they’re going to lose the support of consumers like me that liked the Craftsman Professional lineup. Yes, some of the Professional tools are now replaced by Knipex pliers, but why buy Knipex from Sears when they’re so much cheaper from just about any other distributor?
AndrewC
35% of the hand tool market certainly sounds healthy, but I’d be interested in seeing what that compares to 10 or 20 years ago. Big Box home improvement stores haven’t been around that long, and currently HD and Lowes account for 28% of the hand tool market and 46% of the power tool market (vs 17% for sears)
Fred
I get the distinct impression that I’m younger than nearly every commenter here. I’ll let you guys know what it looks like to me; Craftsman was Dad’s/teacher’s/foreman’s tools, but not mine. They aren’t the same tools they used to be, and I will put that ‘used to be’ fairly recent, early 2000’s were hard on a lot of industries but Sears seems to have not recovered from that like Lowes & HD have in terms of their ability to still offer good quality tools.
Craftsman is trying to realign their hand tools to be ‘as good as’ Kobalt/Ridgid and no better. They’re trying to limit the variety they have in power tools to simplify things. They’re still within some contracts for one philosophy (about 2001 Craftsman had probably 4 different choices for any particular category, I remember them specifically having 8 routers branded Craftsman) so you see a mish-mosh of these things and it looks like a mess from the consumer’s perspective.
The Craftsman evolv line is just plain poor. HF hand tools are at this point a step above them. None of the storage solutions branded evolv are sturdy, durable, or worth the price. Now, if the price gap for these items were more consistent with the quality gap, when compared with ‘full Craftsman’ branded items, then it would be a different story. So now we have the bulk of their hand tools branded Craftsman. Once these were on par with Mac/Matco/Snap-on from the perspective of several mechanics and I’ve learned from. In fact, until I started buying my own tools I was only barely aware of Kobalt or whatever HD had before Ridgid hand tools. I had assumed they only sold Stanley, Channelock, Irwin, Estwing, major name-brands that did not supply a full lineup. It feels like the Task Force, itt (Ace I think), & those types haven’t been around that long either because I never had experience with anything but the higher end.
Finally, the Craftsman Pro lineup, where my experience was mostly with air & power tools. A contractor friend owned 90% Dewalt power tools, the rest were Crafty Pro except his Hitachi cordless drill (we got one of the first 18v tools I had ever seen on a trip to HD I think, $600 and it only came with 1 battery & no bits), but every shop environment I worked the electric tools were all Craftsman Pro as well as most of the air tools. In fact, I inherited the opinions back then that Craftsman Pro was the top of the line air tools and CH & IR were both second tier quality.
Stu’s right though, a lot of people are still buying Craftsman. I feel like maybe I can add this though to that information; the way we interpret that information isn’t as clear as it should be. There’s power tools attempting to replace what hand tools can do for us (nut drivers were always throwaway extras when you bought a set of drill bits, now many are able to drive more than a dozen bolts before they’re rounded), a large part of the workforce is starting to retire, either handing down, selling secondhand, or otherwise spreading the Craftsman brand through those tools’ legacy. So if you bought/inherited a set of Craftsman wrenches, but your 14mm is stripped or missing, where are you likely to go to get a new one? I think there’s more to the story than simply giving Sears credit for the sale of these tools. I know in my own experience I don’t buy from there because of the people but because of the sales & the sears card make things easier to sort out later.
JOHN E. CLEARY
I owned a 4″ bench grinder. When I used it to sharpen my lawn mower blade, it stalled. I knew I needed a larger grinder – specifically an 8″ or larger. I did not want to go to one of those ‘tool stores’ that only sell stuff made in China. Plus the tools rust immediately. I went to Sears and bought a Craftsman grinder. When I got it home, I saw it had a ‘MADE IN CHINA’ sticker. I paid twice as much as the unit only to get the same ‘China made’ grinder. The same thing happened when the motor went out on my BRAND NEW air conditioner/furnace. The repairman said ‘”Sorry, the new motor was made in China. Good luck”. I will need it.