No disagreement about Craftsman hand tools, yet the same can be said for Snap-On and Mac.
Dan Holohan, author of The Lost Art of Steam Heating observed: (similar to a previous poster)
You can have it good.
You can have it fast.
You can have it cheap.
Pick two.
Lots of universal truths there.
Normally your first truth is always applicable-- of course the exceptions are failed business models such as Sears and J.C. Penny. Their prices are higher, service worse, and quality is no better and often worse then similarly priced competition. To me, the wonder is not that they are losing, but that they are still around at all.
Walmart will always have Target dogging their heals, and Home Depot is not growing nearly as fast as Lowes is right now. Don’t forget Bed, Bath and Beyond and those type of stores as well.
I agree on the hand tools, but there are plenty of high quality hand tools at Lowes and Home Depot at better prices and service. I love tools- even if I am not so great at using them. I have never broke a hand tool, but the other high end stuff has lifetime warranties, and those companies may be around a lot longer to actually replace that tool. Heck I can order great tools from Amazon now. Mmmmm, tools. . . . .
It’s too late now for this to help danceswithcats, but I used to work in the lawn and garden department in Sears. We kept manuals in the back and would potocopy them for customers. You might want to try asking next time. Try finding somebody who looks over 16 - the training at Sears is horrible, so the inexperienced employees often don’t know much.
Their upscale business model sucks as well. I was hired by The Great Indoors as a kitchen designer with promises of big commissions, lots of support, dedicated project managers, and more business than I could handle.
I hung in for 8 whole weeks.
5 weeks in, with not a single sale yet, another designers’ customer came into the store at 8:30 a.m. to sign the contract for her kitchen. She was purchasing cabinets, countertops, installation, appliances, plumbing fixtures, the works. It was a nice job, about 85K.
At noon, she was still there because the Sears computer system made them input every. single. fucking. item individually. Yes, every single cabinet, filler, handle, piece of moulding had to be manually entered into the system and paid for up front. She was asked more than 5 times to apply for a Sears card which she repeatedly refused.
At 5 p.m. she called the manager of the store in, told him what she thought, cancelled the entire order and walked out.
That was the closest I came to seeing an order placed in the entire time I had been there to date!
I went home, wrote up my resume (sans Great Indoors) and sent it out. I got a job a couple weeks later and was planning on giving two weeks notice when my manager calls me in and reams me for not selling enough! Holy Crap onna stick! in the 8 weeks there, NOT ONE SINGLE KITCHEN ORDER had been placed by any of the 5 designers, most of whom had been there for months.
I walked out. Best thing I ever did and the only time I went back was to use a gift certificate I was given. Their crap is over priced, their furniture pieces are shoddy Chinese garbage, and the service is horrendous.
I suspect you are right and shake my head in disbelief. Sear INVENTED shop-by-mail. Now that everone in the glaxy is doing it, they can’t even keep market share.
Remember when Sears wouldn’t accept Visa or MasterCard? They wanted you to use their card. Dumb Bunnies.
I bought my first bike (with my own money!) at Sears. I later discovered all the parts were nonstandard. You had to go to you-know-where for parts.
Does ANYONE like Sears?
No, you should have kept the customer there, and phoned the parts and service center on their behalf so that person doesn’t walk across the store on a potentially fruitless expedition. That’s what service is.
Please tell me there’s a decimal missing from the price you’re quoting. Otherwise, I’m booking a flight to wherever this kitchen is, just to see it. It must be the Taj Mahal of kitchens.
And then when they finally did decide to allow people to use Visa & MasterCard, they tried to force a Sears version of same onto all of their existing Sears credit card customers.
I’d had a Sears card for ages - it was practically the first card I got after graduating (gotta build that good credit history and all that), but I called the 800 number on the accompanying letter and told them to cancel the account. Last thing I needed was another Visa/MC sitting in my wallet, just waiting to be stolen.
About the only thing I buy from Sears any more are replacement blades & other parts for my 14-year-old lawn mower.
Sauron, the price is right:)
And it’s far from the most expensive kitchen I have seen (or even sold personally). The biggest one for me was a job in Key West for a guy who owned something like 300 Burger King franhises personally, the cabinets for that project alone were over 400,000 dollars. Yes, $400K
Of course the house had three kitchens (main, catering kitchen, and kitchenette in the MIL area), more than ten bathrooms, a pool locker area, a billiards room, a fully panelled Den with 12’ high bookcases, wainscoting in the hallways, etc.
I hate these people sometimes 
On my desk at work right now I have two cabinet orders that list at >100K each, even with the multiplier, it’s a lots of cabinets.
My uncle worked for Sears for years before he was finally forced into early retirement. My dad worked for Sears when he got out of high school, and my uncle was his supervisor-actually, that’s how my parents met. My aunt fixed them up, since she knew my dad. (It’s a pretty cute story, actually).
I have to say, I’ve gotten some nice clothes from Sears. But honestly, I don’t see how it’s any different from what they offer at Pennys, Lazarus or Kaufman’s.
You must not have remolded kitchens recently. 85K is quite a lot but I cannot see redoing a good sized kitchen with modern nice stuff (not the top end stuff but not the absolute cheapest stuff for much less than 40K).
Bloody hell. I’m in the wrong business. I should be remodeling kitchens.
Apparently it’s nothing to spend as much money on a kitchen as I make in a year or two.