Friday, March 08, 2019
Power Tool Manufacturers and Who Really Owns Them
PTR: Every wonder who owns Craftsman tools? How about Milwaukee, Mac Tools, or Skilsaw? It may surprise you to know that only a handful of companies own your favorite power tool manufacturers. That’s right, most tool brands fall under a parent company which also controls additional brands. We break it down for you…with charts!
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3 comments:
I guess it makes sense that power tools are monopolized to some extent just like everything else, although I had not considered it before. It makes you wonder what the difference is between these tools really. I mean how much money is put into them is one big factor, but if the research and design is being done by largely the same parent company, could their results really be that different? It is so interesting to me to think about how people are so set on one tool brand or brand of anything when really they are almost the same to the competition. I just recently bought my first cordless tool, and I felt like I was choosing a brand for life with my purchase, which is just bizarre to me. It is funny to think of our free market in these terms… It makes it seem like we have a lot less choice than we think we do.
Although you can walk in a tool shop and found every piece of the equipment is owned by the same corporation, they are still in several different brands. As far as information I can get and confirm, Makita, a great example of a brand sold to the other company, did suffer some impact from competitors and stress from inside the company. When they first started to undertaking the new production under the new owner, many consumers complained about the quality drop which took the company several year to rebuild their branding. Though I am leaning towards the idea that was a propaganda by the other company, I can still understand that Makita was still trying to make itself distinguished with other brands on the market. My point is, although many brands share the exact same owner, they are somehow still using the brand name to market their own specialized products.
Like Cooper said, it is not really that surprising that tool manufacturers have a monopoly of sorts in their own respected fields. Whenever I think of monopolies, companies like Coca Cola and Disney immediately come to mind. While these tool monopolies are not as recognizable there still are some interesting competition that seems to go one within one conglomerate. The Stanley Black and Decker company seems to be winning when it comes to generic home improvement level equipment, but perhaps the most surprising to me was the fact that Milwaukee and Ryobi are owned by the same people. I always held those two brands to very different levels in my head and now that I know this, it kind of upsets that balance. For example, I used to work for someone that had an unbreakable allegiance to Ryobi tools while I always preferred Milwaukee, I would be interested to see what he would have to say about this tool monopoly controlling both brands.
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