Just like last time, a large portion of the salesfloor around the main entrance was dedicated to tools, starting with an assortment of DieHard and Craftsman tool boxes. I'm surprised Sears sold these under the DieHard brand, since their Craftsman boxes were so iconic, but I suppose they were targeted at the automotive market. For some reason, Craftsman stuff was 50% off, while the DieHard version was only 30% off.
I'm not sure why Sears used the DieHard name for those tool boxes rather than the Craftsman name. By this point, both names had been sold off, but they had some rights to use both. The only things I can think of is that maybe they had better terms on their licensing deal to use the DieHard name than Craftsman. Also, when Craftsman was sold off, I noticed that the Craftsman stuff at Lowe's was not quite to the same standard as the stuff I was used to at Sears. Perhaps Sears thought that someone would see a Craftsman product at Lowe's for less than at Sears and will want to buy it from Lowe's, but may not realize that they actually aren't the same things. Thus, maybe they used the DieHard name. I don't know.
ReplyDeleteSears was trying some interesting things in the 2010s. For example, they sold a line of DieHard branded tires (made by Hankook I think) at Sears Auto Centers. Previously, Sears never used the DieHard name on tires, they used things like Allstate years ago and RoadHandler in somewhat more recent times. Sears even tried a Kenmore-branded LCD HDTV! None of those things lasted for very long. Lampert liked to try things, but then never really saw them through.