Sure, the sign isn't directly claiming that Craftsman tools are somehow artisanally produced in small batches (did I get the hipster vibe right there?), but definitely seems like what the tagline "pride is not mass produced" seems to imply! It's especially funny to see that since Sears/Craftsman never made their own tools, instead contracting the production out to a variety of companies, similar to Kenmore (though unlike Kenmore, a good number of Craftsman products were unique to the brand rather than being a simple rebadge). Over here, we also have a small section of Craftsman-branded clothing (didn't realize that was a thing), one of the Find-It Centers that used to be all over Sears stores, and the restrooms, with an awkwardly tacked-on accessibility symbol on the sign.
Ha, I think pride went out the window at Sears a long time ago! It certainly did during the Lampert days. With that, perhaps Sears was making it clear that their tools weren't made with pride!
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't unusual for Sears to have a unique feature or two in their Kenmore appliances that weren't in the equivalent Whirlpool models or whoever was the OEM for their appliances. When Sears was the king of appliance sales, I suppose the appliance manufacturers didn't have a problem giving Sears a unique feature. That said, Craftsman had some really unique tools, like the Robo Grips, and I don't think Kenmore had much that was truly unique. I guess the exception to this might be with smaller appliances. Panasonic made most of Kenmore's vacuums for many years and I think there were some unique features on those vacuums as compared to regular Panasonic vacuums (which weren't easy to find) and the other brands.
Yeah, eventually the Craftsman name was used on clothes and shoes! I guess it made sense especially since Sears probably did better with heavy duty work clothes than with regular fashions.
I'm not sure why Sears felt like highlighting the ADA compliance of their restrooms here. Maybe they have other restrooms in this store which aren't compliant? I'm not sure if I've seen that before and that era of signage is certainly newer than when ADA compliance was made a legal requirement.
Ha, maybe!
DeleteInteresting -- I never paid that much attention to Kenmore appliances, but I didn't realize they were customized (even if just a little bit) from standard appliances! I should have thought about the fact that they sold things that weren't otherwise widely available, too.
I'm not sure what the deal is with the accessibility symbol, but I know there were complicated requirements about labeling things that were and weren't accessible in the early days of the ADA. For many years, King County Metro's paper bus schedules still included a note that "all trips are accessible" somewhere in the fine print, even though that had been true for decades! (I think they finally got rid of it in the past few years.) I am all too familiar with the weird minutia of ADA requirements, and yet there are still little bits of it that I learn from time to time!