By this time, Sears had sold off their exclusive right to the Craftsman name, but they were apparently still trying to stay relevant, introducing new branding calling themselves "the
original home of Craftsman". I'm pretty sure the Craftsman products being sold at other stores were completely different to the ones that the remaining Sears stores sold (at least in 2018; I'm not sure about today), which has to be rather confusing for people who care about those things.
Yes, these Craftsman tools at Sears are not the same as the Craftsman tools sold at Lowe's and other stores which sell the Stanley Black & Decker Craftsman tools which have more red packaging rather than the red, white, and black packaging Sears uses/used. The Sears ones also say Sears on the back and have the Sears department codes on them.
ReplyDeleteFor a while before the Craftsman rights were sold, Ace Hardware stores also sold Sears Craftsman tools. Now I think they sell Stanley Black & Decker Craftsman tools.
I believe that when Sears sold the Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker, Sears retained the right to use the Craftsman name on their own products for a certain number of years. At this point, that is probably mostly irrelevant given what is left of Sears. Also, I'm not sure if Stanley Black & Decker got the rights to use the Craftsman name on all the things Sears uses/used it on like lawn equipment, clothing, and stuff like the garage door openers in that photo.
Sears used many suppliers for their Craftsman hand tool products, but most of their famous screwdrivers were made by a company called Western Forge. I believe Western Forge went out of business after a dispute with Sears around 2017 or so and then I guess the Stanley Black & Decker deal ensured that the Sears Craftsman deals they had were never coming back. Stanley Black & Decker probably has their own suppliers for hand tools, but I suspect a few of them might be the same as what Sears used especially towards the end when Sears was using more foreign-sourced tools.
I don't follow racing at all these days, but I did see that Stanley Black & Decker has started to become the title sponsor of the NASCAR truck racing series. When that series first started in 1995, Sears was a big sponsor of it and it was called the Craftsman SuperTruck Series (later the Craftsman Truck Series). Sears stopped sponsoring the series somewhere along the way and I think the Camping World stores took over the sponsorship before returning to Craftsman here recently.
When the SuperTruck Series first started, it was mostly based on west coast racers and race tracks so it was a rare instance of tracks and oval track racers in your part of the world getting a lot of major exposure. Some of the tracks they raced at back when were Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, WA (I'm pretty sure this track is still around), the short track oval in Portland which later went out of business (the road racing circuit nearby in Portland is still around), Mesa Marin in Bakersfield, and Saugus Speedway. It didn't take the series long to move away from the western short tracks and towards more traditional major NASCAR tracks, unfortunately. Those races at places like Evergreen Speedway and Portland were a lot of fun.
Interesting, I never knew Ace Hardware sold actual Sears Craftsman tools at one point! I don't remember seeing them at Swains (the local Ace in Port Angeles), but I might just not have ever noticed since I'm not a big tool person.
DeleteEven when I used to sort of follow NASCAR, I was never into the truck series. I know it was sponsored by Camping World at that time, though! I definitely don't remember the Craftsman days or the races ever happening around here -- that must have been before my time. The Evergreen Speedway still exists as part of the Evergreen State Fairgrounds (not to be confused with the Washington State Fair in Puyallup).