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Sears is selling the Craftsman brand

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Just saw this today. They're selling the whole shebang to Stanley.

Locally, they're closing our nearby Sears store. Nationally they are closing quite a lot of stores. No great loss to us here, but I'm sad to see such an American icon stumbling like this.
 
Apparently Sears has also put Kenmore and DieHard up for sale! Man, we've been Sears customers for 40 years!
 
Sears has been in financial trouble for decades. Closing stores, re-aligning lines. Surprised it took them this long.

On another forum I thought I had read the Craftsman line went to China for manufacture some time ago..as in, no longer "Made in the USA".
 
They started selling China tools and they would no longer trade broken wratchets or supply kits. Pretty much killed the tools when they stopped replacements.
 
I worked for Sears in Highschool.
worked part time & summers in the hardware Dept.

great memories.....(hardware was right across the aisle from lingerie, for a teen ager it didn't get any better than that)

our local store closed down two years ago.
 
I think a lot of brick and mortar stores are going to go under if they don't adapt to changing times and online conditions.
 
I think a lot of brick and mortar stores are going to go under if they don't adapt to changing times and online conditions.

It'd have to be some extreme adaptation, because if it's online shopping that people want, there needn't BE any brick and mortar stores...
 
It'd have to be some extreme adaptation, because if it's online shopping that people want, there needn't BE any brick and mortar stores...

This raises the inevitable question:

No brick and mortar stores - where will those people work?
 
It is already happening. Several times in the last couple years I have had to buy online because I can't find what I want locally in Los Angeles. A fairly large city with a lot of commerce. Just this month I couldn't find a Chemex coffee pot in the size I wanted.
 
I'd be curious, does it take more people to staff a Home Depot (or Walmart, etc.) or more drivers to deliver all the Amazon stuff?

Of course once self-driving trucks and drones take over... our economy is a-changing!

Probably the former. But one thing that is nice about stores like Home Depot is you can actually see, touch, hold stuff. Much different than just viewing something online. My 2 cents.
 
Much prefer Brick and Mortar stores. Sometimes when I have a home repair problem I will go up and down various ails in Home Depot and see something I had not thought of which is a perfect solution. I try to buy at a B & M store and check to see where it was made. Buy US made if possible but sometimes there is no option but chinese made.
Hate the on-line shopping where they keep pushing pop ups in front of you. "Other shoppers have bought this item" type adds. But the availability of things on line is what the Instant Gratification generation want and stores seem to stock less and less now.

David
 
Much prefer Brick and Mortar stores. Sometimes when I have a home repair problem I will go up and down various ails in Home Depot and see something I had not thought of which is a perfect solution. I try to buy at a B & M store and check to see where it was made. Buy US made if possible but sometimes there is no option but chinese made.
Hate the on-line shopping where they keep pushing pop ups in front of you. "Other shoppers have bought this item" type adds. But the availability of things on line is what the Instant Gratification generation want and stores seem to stock less and less now.

David


I prefer real stores for some things - like home repair stuff, appliances, etc., but for certain items, I'm fine with online. For example, I buy nearly all my Camera gear online. I try to ignore the ads and just buy what I went there to buy (I say I try - not saying I'm always successful LOL)
 
But the availability of things on line is what the Instant Gratification generation want and stores seem to stock less and less now.
Which is the joke to me. Having to wait for the item to be shipped. Not acceptable when something like your heater breaks.
 
I find our local hardware stores & lumberyard offer better quality stuff than Home Depot at prices that are at least competitive, if not better at times. I'm also in & out a lot faster. The only chain store I go to often is Barnes & Noble because we have no good local alternative. But nothing local can beat the net for some things.
 
Do think we are also talking apples and oranges - We are particularly talking the demise of Department Stores (Macy's & Sears) And Sears has been lost in the woods for quite a while now - that said, yes this is a massive transition - online but also speciality shops. (Of course a good healthy chunk of we have seen the enemy and it is us :rolleyes:)

That said, this appeared on Hemmings today:

https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php...bution-and-domestic-manufacturing/?refer=news

Maybe even a silver lining if the quality and manufacturing stays on this side of the ocean.
 
Sears kind of falls into a never-neverland of retail. They are not WalMart or Target in terms of being a bargain place, but they are not upscale like many other chains.

It is sad to see a national institution like Sears failing. I remember getting the "Wish Book" Catalog every year and poring over the pages looking at the toys that I wanted. Later, I started looking at some of the automotive stuff they offered. They weren't quite as extensive as J.C. Whitney, but some of the stuff you could get from the Sears Catalog was really quite surprising for a department store.
 
In 1965, my Dad walked into a Sears store auto parts counter and ordered a full clutch assembly for a 1957 Jag XK140 MC Coupe. Picked it up 3 days later.
 
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