My local Home Depot store recently set up a large and well-laid-out display of Ryobi rotary tools and universally-compatible rotary tool accessories.
This is not a promotional display, but a revamp of my most-frequented Home Depot store’s permanent rotary tools and accessories section, which was previously dominated by Dremel.
Dremel still has a strong presence at my store, but Ryobi’s highly visible setup is definitely going to attract a lot of attention from customers.
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My local Home Depot store clearanced out select Dremel rotary tool accessory SKUs back in March, shortly after Ryobi announced a new 18V brushless rotary tool, a new 12V rotary tool, and a rotary tool hobby station.
This was an interesting development, and I snapped a quick photo in case this wasn’t merely coincidental.
A couple of weeks later, Ryobi rotary tool accessory sets appeared in stores.
Home Depot stores offer quite few different types of Ryobi power tool accessories, and – to be frank – I consider them to be lower-priced budget-friendly options.
For example, if I want a basic router set to experiment with or just to have for whatever might come up unexpectedly, Ryobi is fine. If I need a particular style and size of router bit, I buy a brand-name bit. Ryobi usually isn’t even an option; searching Home Depot’s website, it looks like Ryobi doesn’t even sell individual router bits, they only have assortments.
I assumed the same would be true with Ryobi’s rotary tool accessories, and that they were just bringing a couple of assortment sets to Home Depot stores. I was wrong.
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The new Ryobi rotary tools display has a selection of their 18V cordless models, including the brushless rotary tool they launched earlier this year.
On the right, the display features one of Ryobi’s corded rotary tools, their new 12V rotary tool, and a selection of new Ryobi USB Lithium cordless hobby tools.
New Ryobi rotary tool accessory sets are positioned on pegs above a rotary tool selection guide.
There is also a more expansive selection of individual Ryobi rotary tool accessory SKUs than I had anticipated.
Ryobi also has a selection chart for their “Universal Fitment” accessories, which are advertised as being compatible with all rotary tools.
Looking at the full display once more, there’s a little bit of empty space – is this for room to grow?
Why is this Significant?
One thing I have learned over the years is that that retail store displays can play a big part in a product’s success.
Highly visible products can still sell poorly, but can products sell well without high visibility? Visibility is instrumental to a product or product line’s success, especially when it comes to brick and mortar retail store placement.
In retail stores, products that don’t sell well enough are often removed to clear space for products that might sell better.
Ryobi’s new rotary tools and accessories display is definitely highly visible, and customers are going to take notice.
One thing’s for certain – I’m sure the folks over at Dremel have taken notice. Dremel has been unrivaled as the top consumer rotary tool and accessory brand for a very long time. With Home Depot presumably bringing Ryobi’s sizable rotary tool display to many, most, or maybe even all stores nationwide, this could pose a serious threat to Dremel’s previously undisputed position as industry leader.
There was a time when I considered Craftsman as number two in the rotary tool space, years before Sears faltered and eventually sold the brand to Stanley Black & Decker, but all of those tools and accessories were made for them by Dremel.
Ryobi’s investment in the hobbyist tool space is not surprising, but I cannot say that I could ever have imagined they would give this much attention to rotary tools and accessories.
From the looks of things, Ryobi has big plans, and they’ve got to be aiming to take a bite out of Dremel’s market share. Everyone wins when there’s healthy competition like this.
MM
It’s been about a month since I visited a HD but my local Lowe’s has seemingly been in a perpetual state of re-arranging their displays for about the past year or so. It’s actually extremely frustrating to me, the customer, because I have to re-learn where some of my staple purchases are.
It’s also frustrating for another reason: it makes it so the employees have no idea where anything is either. Many years ago when I worked in a hardware store it was we, the standard employees, who re-arranged displays so if someone asked us where something was we knew darn well where it was located because we’re the ones who put it there. Lowe’s seems to outsource this to employees wearing “MSI” shirts, not the standard Lowe’s staff. This is mind-boggling to me because if the MSI staff are the ones moving merchandise around that means the normal employees don’t know where things got moved to. Why Lowe’s won’t have their normal employees redo displays seems puzzling to me; if they were the ones doing that work their product knowledge would automatically be much better.
I suppose this sort of thing must pay off since the companies keep doing it, but from my perspective it’s nothing but frustrating. I walk into a home store with a surgical strike in mind. I know exactly what I want to buy. Whether or not the merchandise is part of a fancy new display or is crammed in the back of some shelf doesn’t matter one bit to me. I’m not there to browse or impulse-buy, I’m there to get what I need checked off my list ASAP.
Art
Fascinating exclusive arrangement between Ryobi and HD. Clearly benefits both and they make it work. But I’d love to be a fly on the wall at some of the top level meetings between them :-).
Ryobi US might also be a fun place to work. A mosquito zapper? A joystick on the zero-turn? I can imagine the new product development meetings and the ideas that are considered.
MM
I think hearing some of the ideas brainstormed would be very cool but ultimately I fear that I’d be too frustrated with “management” and quit.
I could see this happening:
Marketer: Hey, why don’t we sell a cordless mosquito zapper?
Management: Engineers, is that possible? Could we make a cordless zapper?
Engineers: Well we could, but you know those don’t actually kill many mosquitoes, right? We’ve known for decades now that bug zappers do more harm than good. It’s just poor idea. People will be wasting money & resources on a product which doesn’t actually work.
Marketer: Who cares? People will still buy them. People hear the -buzzt- sound when it zaps a bug and that will feed their confirmation bias that the zapper is working. They won’t notice that it zapped a bee instead of mosquito, people will love it!
Management: Great, bug zapper approved. Hey you engineers, get on that. Think you can have a prototype designed by next Tuesday?
Robert
MM, you’re right on the mark.
Travis
Those flexible shaft Tools look interesting.
I use a rotary tool alot at work for cleaning up 3d printed parts, modifying fixtures etc. Recently, I went from a dremel to a 1/3 hp Foredom tool and the difference is night and day.
I would love a Foredom at home too, buy I’m not sure I would use it frequently enough to justify the cost. I wonder where the Ryobi flexible shaft tools fall on that performance curve.
Nate
None of the Home Depots around me have yet to stock the new ryobi 12v tools. I’m a bit disappointes because I’d like to check them out before buying.
Davethetool
Hopefully Ryobi accessories are more affordable in price than Dremel. Over the years of purchasing rotary tool accessories Dremel has always seemed outrageous in their pricing of accessories IMO. Yeah there are many that say unbeatable in quality blah blah but we are talking about items that cost maybe a nickel to manufacture and then charged 1000% markup! Again just my opinion but I rarely have purchased Dremel accessories individually because of this price gouging. Normally I wait for sale pricing or seasonal clearance etc and stock up then whether they are Dremel or generic. Most of the accessory kits offer the specific tools I use most such as cutting wheels, polishing wheels, sandpaper wheels, grinding stones, etc. Ryobi seems to have tapped into a market that others have avoided and I assume it has to do with production costs along with tons of accessories to maintain and produce. As usual it all comes down to marketing of the products.
MM
While I’m not claiming they are the best value for the money, I’ve noticed that prices on most Dremel bits have come down over time. When I got my first rotary tool as a teenager in the early 90’s I was buying them from the local model and craft stores. They had a ubiquitous (for the time) display cabinet on a counter. The side that faced the customer had a display of all the bits and the back was a cabinet for the shop to store inventory. It was incredibly space efficient. But I remember the average burr being $10 and the grinding stones being not too far off from that. The tungsten carbide rough style burrs were nearly $20 a pop. I remember it well because I always wanted a few of those but I could never afford them. Now many years later the bits are often less costly than I paid back in the day and that’s just talking about the flat-out price, not making any adjustments for inflation.
I will say I find that Dremel quality far exceeds the no-name import Amazon stuff but it’s not anything all that amazing either.
Michael Hammer
That’s an impressive display. I would not have thought the market so large as to support so much real estate in HD. I hope Ryobi cutoff wheels fit Dremel’s quick change mandrel. Is HD no longer carrying Dremel at all? It’s an interesting move on HD’s part. It really puts Dremel back on their heals. Dremel’s cordless tools are absolute garbage. It’s like they’re not even trying. I switched to Milwaukee ages ago, but still have to buy Dremel accessories. Do you think this could ultimately push Dremel out of the market? If more people, like me, turn away from the tool and now have a ready alternative to accessories. Yikes!
Jacob
I went to my Home Depot last night for some stuff and swung down that aisle to see what was going on. They had the big Ryobi display there and a smaller Dremel, so I think right now they are still selling both, just not devoting as much attention to Dremel. My hands were full so I couldn’t take a good look, but it seemed impressive.
SteveP
I frequent a few different HDs between my home (two stores) and cottage (two on the way). They have all finally moved to locking up the Ryobi power tools in the permanent display. Makes buying one a chore – you have to find a rep that is free, then they have to find the code (unless they know it). One would not let me have the tool but walked it to the register and said I could pick it up as I checked out. Very off-putting (“You sir, look like a thief to me”.) The other stores just give me the box and are happy
BUT – they all have HUGE piles of the “on-promotion” Ryobi tools just piled up randomly – sometimes in three or four scattered locations. I wonder why those aren’t in cages as well?
Gregg
HomeDepot in SoCal is doing Ryobi days. I picked up a misting fan and a couple batteries for a good price.
Stacey Jones
Dremel should be very afraid. Ryobi will eat their lunch!
Ezra
I wonder if AEG (Rigid) follow their little brother with this? An orange cordless replacement/complement for the Dremels would be nice.
I have a 1/8″ rotary attachment for the multi-tool but it is awful bulky, equivalent of their new dedicated drywall cutter. Also annoyingly it has an interlocked switch that does not lock on, so even if a flex shaft could be attached it would be unusable.
AEG don’t cover nearly the same range as Ryobi and Milwaulkee, but many good things trickle across eventually. The current tax-time catalogue promises an 18V heat gun coming soon! but not in time for tax 😛
Ez