IIRC, 99% of all ratchets are made in China, to include Snap-on, MAC, Craftsman, etc. Got that from Garage Journal somewhere...
IIRC, 99% of all ratchets are made in China, to include Snap-on, MAC, Craftsman, etc. Got that from Garage Journal somewhere...
You know that China will build stuff as good as you pay them to right?
They have a functioning space program, they're not idiots.
I don't use tools heavily enough (20 year old Alltrade still going strong) to really care about this, but all the cheap gimmick tools I've ever gotten for Christmas were either Craftsman or B&D. So this could be bad.
I've been seeing a lot of Craftsman at Lowes recently, and this is troubling. I sure hope they don't ditch their Kobalt stuff for Craftsman.
Everything Kobalt that I've bought in the past 10 years has been fantastic. Two of my favorite tools to use right now (my ratcheting wrenches and my pass-through socket/ratchet set) are Kobalt. I've heard great things about other tools under the Kobalt brand as well. And they are almost always on some mega sale!
On the contrary, everything Craftsman I've bought in the past 10 years has been total, unadulterated garbage. When you can't make a wrench that works properly, you have a problem.
It has zero to do with WHERE they are built, and 100% with HOW they are built. It doesn't matter if it's built in Podunk, Arkansas or on another freaking planet; It has everything to do with design and how much capital/effort is poured into QC and manufacturing.
With Sears struggling, they didn't do the latter. Quality might even go UP with Stanley at the helm. This is a BIG brand for them; I would think they would want to nail this one. Time will tell.
No disagreement that, on paper, the location of manufacturing shouldn't affect quality. I feel like there is a knock-on effect, though; if the company has chosen to manufacture the thing in China or related locations, it's most likely done so to lower manufacturing costs. How often has that been done to pass on higher quality to the consumer? They're not doing it to help the customer outside of reducing pricing.
I feel like the American-made or other locations that have been mentioned tools are higher quality because quality wasn't allowed to escape the equation.
In reply to pres589 :
I think that stigma has just stuck around from when China, and the rest of east Asia, was just spooling up their industrial base from a largely agricultural existence. These days it doesn't matter so much as production controls have been pretty well nailed down and workers are trained for performing high quality industrial work in cases where it is required.
I suspect whenever Africa politically stabilizes, several of that continents largest countries will displace the China as the worlds manufacturing hub as it's the really the final pool of untapped cheap labor. When that happens we'll see something similar play out again. China knows this, which is why they're investing heavily to influence African development.
Maybe I wasn't clear; I see the move of production to China or similar low-cost area as a display that the company is primarily interested in cost reduction and product quality is at best a secondary concern. Factory location in and of itself is not the issue.
You could also look at it as a way to improve quality at a given price.
More often than not, this was a regular conversation in the hand-tools department at the store I worked in:
Customer: "Snap-on wants $110 for a ratchet, I'm not paying that. What do you have for a decent quality ratchet?"
Counter guy: "We have this Proto ratchet, made in the USA for $75. Lifetime guarantee too."
Customer: "Uhh, do you have anything cheaper?"
Counter guy: "The ones in the bin over there are $20.00 but they're made offshore"
Customer wanders over and picks the junk ratchet from the "novelty" tool bin.
Joe 12-pack doesn't want good quality, they expect everything to cost $5.00
Our Stahl-Willie, Proto and Blackhawk lines sat and gathered dust while the Alltrade, Crescent and Titan garbage sold like hotcakes. Guess what we started stocking more of?
Craftsman is a victim of the consumer as much as it's a victim of the bean counter.
Keith Tanner said:You could also look at it as a way to improve quality at a given price.
I could definitely try. Can you point to an example where this actually happened?
For the folks in the back, the move to offshore is to reduce costs, not improve quality, and I'm hoping anyone can point to a good example of me being wrong. This is for established companies / products, not something new where there's no existing installed operation. If I was going to try and make my own cell phones, I would go to where the majority of cell phone production is taking place, which is China. If I had a 100 year old brand of hand tools, I wouldn't go to China in hopes of improving quality. I would stay put.
In reply to pres589 :
Of course it's to reduce cost, why wouldn't it be to reduce cost. But by reducing cost the same quality and product features can be maintained if not improved. Tool manufacturers aren't trying to make lower quality products, the market is way too competitive for that. The problem is that US labor, material and equipment costs are too high to make domestic tool manufacturing worth the while most of the time. Yes, some people are willing to pay a premium for a domestic made product. However, that premium, more often than not, is larger than what customers are willing to pay. Unfortunately that means that some products have been moved over seas to maintain a competitive price. E.g. Would you rather spend $250 on a cordless drill or $400 for the same exact cordless drill but it has a "Made in USA" sticker on the box?
It's often forgotten that the US once once the low man on the global industrial totem pole churning out low quality products in high volumes. Then it was Japan after WWII and China followed shortly after. Now India, Vietnam and Africa are at the bottom.
My point being that modern Chinese manufacturing is not the potmetal garbage of yesteryear. It's 95% as good as American manufacturing (with the right quality control) and the labor/equipment cost is fractional compared to domestic competitors. We live in a global market and that's not going to change anytime soon.
If you maintain quality but move the price point down, you have improved quality at that new price point. It's all relative. You could potentially put more money into the product, maintain your existing price point and increase quality. Japan learned that lesson.
We have gone to China for some parts and seen both improved quality AND lower costs. We've also brought some parts back from overseas to have them made in the US.
I fully understand why Craftsman would move overseas. For wrenches, there's no challenge in production. For power tools, there's probably a more established production base in China than the US these days.
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