Lowe’s, which apparently doesn’t believe in press releases anymore, quietly launched a new line of “Home Repair” pliers under their Kobalt brand.
Frankly speaking, I can’t tell if this is actually a new cohesive product line, or if they simply copy/pasted “Home Repair” into the title of each pliers for search optimization purpose.
We recently called out Lowe’s for describing a Jonard fiber optic installation and maintenance tool kit – a very specialized tool set – as a “household tool kit,” and Lowe’s lurkers quickly had it changed to read “electronics repair maintenance tool kit.”
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Maybe those same folks can explain what we’re seeing here.
Shown above are the new Kobalt “Home Repair Multitool pliers,” which looks a lot like fencing pliers to me.
The Kobalt 11-inch “Home Repair needle nose pliers” caught my attention.
Lowe’s says they provide “easy access to tight spots and narrow spaces, keeps hands a safe distance from hot surfaces and sharp edges.”
While they don’t have a compound joint design, which would decrease the opening width for even better reach in tight spaces, the basic extra-long pliers do look decent.
Lowe’s price is $20, and you can find nearly identical Workpro pliers for $14 at Amazon.
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Lowe’s also has new Kobalt “Home Repair” snap ring pliers.
The new Kobalt snap ring pliers features 4 interchangeable tip sets that can be used for accessing internal or external rings.
There are a couple of other pliers included in Lowe’s listing of new Kobalt hand tools – 3 sizes of adjustable pliers and 2 end cutters.
All have the same “Home Repair” designation.
I’m happy to see Lowe’s expand their Kobalt hand tool lineup, but I’m not sure what to think about these.
All of the new Kobalt pliers look… generic, for lack of a better description. You can find similar and even nearly identical-looking pliers for less, with the only obvious differences being the Kobalt black and blue-colored handled grips.
Lowe’s piqued my interest, and then it all came crashing down.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Lowe’s didn’t even bother editing the Kobalt color pallet out of some of their images. It’s a simple oversight, but one more sign that suggests nobody at Lowe’s truly cares about the Kobalt tool brand anymore.
If Lowe’s doesn’t seem to care about Kobalt, why should anyone else? I should be used to being disappointed by Lowe’s and Kobalt by now, but going from “ooh, new tools!” to “oh, there’s no reason to care” is still upsetting.
Someone please convince me I’m wrong, and that these Kobalt pliers aren’t just rebrands of generic pliers with blue handles and higher prices.
Mark M.
At this point Lowes is like an old car that just smokes a little bit more every time you start it. Which is a shame, because at least locally their stores are clean and I far prefer some of their stuff to HD (lumber, electrical, and irrigation supplies to name a few). IDK how this ends but it doesn’t seem like it’s headed in the right direction.
Kyle
I make a trip to my local Lowe’s at least once a week just to see what tools they’ve clearance priced. Not really a great sign when your store is constantly empty and my only reason for going is analogous to a vulture picking scraps of meat off an animal carcass.
PW
Not once a week, but similar!
I noticed a recent spate of clearanced Kobalt pliers. I can’t tell at a glance if these are new versions for the same thing, they just relabeled their old offerings, or what. Also not a good sign.
I also didn’t buy any of their clearanced pliers because I didn’t need them. They also seemed worse than pliers I already own. I was deeply unimpressed with their channel lock knockoffs.
Corey Trevor
Recently, they had been clearancing their Actual Channellock brand stuff. I bought many to complete my plier drawer.
PW
There was a round of Channellock clearance at my local stores about 6 mos ago, but those have been gone for a while. They seemed to be making room fo some Klein product as best I could tell.
I picked up a nice deal on some Channellock linesman’s pliers.
I really appreciate the Channellock company. They are almost alone in avoiding offshoring while also maintaining reasonable prices. I am very concerned about their downward shelf space in all the big box stores around me.
Mopar
I generally prefer Home Depot to Lowes; in my area HD always seems “happy”, while the Lowes vibe is more depressing. Lowes also tends to be slightly more expensive for most things. However, while neither store is especially close to me, they are only 2500ft from each other. That means I don’t just “run out to grab something”, I check their websites/apps before I leave the house and then decide which one I’m going to.
Scottie
I can tell you for fact that those style snap ring pliers are total junk….Not just from Lowes,but any brand of this style pliers that I’ve ever tried always go sideways or will not stay on the snap ring…..Dedicated pliers are the best for snap rings,internal or external.
Stuart
Oh, I don’t doubt that.
I bought Channellock’s multi-tip tool years ago, and even that one is barely passable. I treated myself to a Knipex set, and so I should be set for life.
Still, it’s good to have local options one can pick up on a Sunday afternoon. Snap ring pliers were a “my project hit a snag, I need a tool I don’t have!” type of purchase for me, and I assume the same is true for many others.
Reauxtide
The only Snap-on, anything, I own is a set of snap ring pliers. It’s the only set I’ve managed to not break working on my tractors and 3/4 ton trucks.
That said, I believe everyone starts with purchasing the flimsy swappable heads, and works their way through the better sets. The flimsy ones have to work for some project. Right?
James
I have those Channellock multi tip and while they’re not amazing, they fit the bill for me so far for the 1-3 times a year they’re needed. They don’t seem to be showing any signs of weakness; I just find the head a little bulky.
Rog
Those swappable head snap pliers are terrible. They’re too weak to do anything serious with and are always flexing and moving around
Joe E.
I still don’t understand what place Kobalt has now that Lowe’s stores are saturated in a nauseating sea of childish, bright red.
Kobalt is irrelevant at this point, so why are they introducing new products?
That being said, I would much rather see Craftsman get booted and Kobalt reinvent itself as the popular house brand it once was.
Rog
Lowe’s is selling Milwaukee now? 😉
fred
I think Joe was referring to Craftsman
Rog
I know; it was meant to be a joke.
fred
When you get to my age subtleties often fly over your head. I should have seen the emoji. If I told one of the kids in my family – they’d say “well duh” grandpa.
Gary
Lowe’s makes millions off companies like Stanley/Black and Decker for slotting fees for Craftsman tools. Vendors pay dearly for that prime retail space in stores. Has nothing to do with a brand taking over and moreso that SBD has paid heavily to be front and center in tool world. Just like your gonna see Coke in prime point of sale places in grocery stores over the house brand. Coke pays millions for those spaces.
Bonnie
Theoretically there’s room for more than one house/exclusive brand. Home Depot has a few overlaps. But they need at least a little better differentiation than this.
JoshtheFurnaceGuy
I don’t even remember noticing the Kobalt tools the last time I was in Lowes. They definitely aren’t as prominent as the Craftsman display.
Eric
I just looked at their site and it looks to me like they’re trying to use AI to generate those titles for the listings. And whoever is approving them has no clue what they’re actually looking at. The Knipex stuff is especially telling. Things like listing Cobra’s as tongue and groove pliers. RJ45 crimpers as “KNIPEX 7.5-Inch Red Steel Handle Cutting Pliers for Home Repair – Ribbon Cable Cutter and Crimper”
Jared
I think that’s a good guess – e.g. whomever puts the titles on the listings doesn’t actually know what the tool is. Calling fencing pliers “Multitool Pliers” strikes me as pure ineptitude.
….although it DID make me chuckle, because I suppose they ARE a kind of multitool.
Made me imagine someone buying fencing pliers for their “multitool” function without realizing their somewhat more specialized purpose.
No doubt there would be some disappointment! The super-wide head can’t fit most places, the jaws don’t open very wide and have weird-shaped jaws, the hammer face mars everything you point it at and the pry end doesn’t work on nails.
OldDominionDIYer
Lowes is being run by people who have NEVER used a tool. And they are selling (or at least advertising) to people that have never used tools. Sad really. But it’s hard to deny since they don’t even have the smarts to search for the correct name or they know their customer base isn’t knowledgeable enough to know better. Either way it’s a tragedy to see a once promising DIY warehouse store go down in flames.
Stuart
Even so, I still think apathy is the problem.
Ignorance could be compensated for. Apathy? If brand managers and retailer decision makers don’t care, there’s nothing that will make up for that.
Joe E.
I agree with your first statement.
When I was a kid in the 80’s and early 90’s, I would often accompany my Dad to Sears. I remember the old guys working in the tool department and Dad having conversations with them. These were guys who had experience and knew what they were doing. By the time I became an adult, purchased my first car and my first home, Sears is where I went to buy my first tools. By this point (late 2000’s), the employees in the tool department were kids with lazy attitudes and no knowledge of the products on the shelf. They had no desire to help and if you asked a question, you were bothering them.
Lowe’s seems to have done the same thing. It wasn’t all that long ago, you could walk into Lowe’s and the employees were friendly and knowledgeable. If you walk into a Lowe’s today, and if you even manage to find an employee, it’s usually a [politics removed]
Stuart
Please refrain from politics.
s
all of that has to do with the job market.
experience costs money. inexperience costs less money. one of the easiest ways to offset the balance sheet is by reducing the money going out.
about 20 years ago, my dad had been slowly looking for a new job. we went on a family vacation, and ended up meeting a person very high up within the home depot command at the campground.
conversation happened, and my dad indicated he’d be interested in working the electrical department. at that point, he had 40 years electrical experience–going to a single location every day, that’s not outside, sure sounded nice. the guy was ecstatic, saying that they’re always looking for experienced tradesmen to work the departments, and quickly sent my dad’s name through the system with his personal recommendation.
eventually the store offers came in. they were willing to hire him for $15/hr, 35 hours max per week starting.
any journeyman electrician can easily get a minimum $30/hr full time work, with benefits, almost anywhere in the country.
and that’s how the stores effectively priced themselves out of the knowledgeable-help market.
in a race to the bottom, no one wins.
MC703
Not sure what your political comment was but with regards to the quality and expertise of the employees, it’s not political. It’s just part of the enshitification of everything. Big publicly traded companies’ #1 obligation is to the share holders, not the customer trying to get help in the plumbing department.
As long as they’re meeting earnings targets and margins, executives will keep making multimillion dollar bonuses while paying as few human beings as possible the lowest salaries they can to keep those shareholders happy. And for you and me that means that they have decided it’s not worth it to pay someone with the experience and knowledge in todays tight labor market where they can go make 3-4x what they would at Lowe’s or HD
Bob
It’s a business. They exist to make money. If they can make more with cheap, ignorant labor, that’s what they should do. If having domain experts increased customer loyalty and thus profits, they’d pay for it.
My guess is that the times have changed. Most people do their research on line and don’t want/need in store help. Those that do want that experience lose out, but they’re likely the minority. Smaller hardware stores are where they need to go. But that does come at a premium.
Doresoom
I also find it incredibly odd that they couldn’t crop out the Chinese characters in the product photo saying “snap ring”. It’s like they just took their suppliers catalog image and slapped it in the product listing.
But surely they had to do some photoshop for the Kobalt grips, so why not cut that extraneous Chinese text out of their English website listing while they’re at it?
BigTimeTommy
Probably outsourced that job and didn’t give extremely specific instructions.
Bonnie
Or shoved it at an underpaid intern with a thousand other unrelated tasks.
Stuart
That’s exactly my point – catching errors like that tend to require caring.
It’s not always clear if a company has pride in their tools or brands, but there tend to be signs when they don’t.
Wayne R.
I’m in Colorado, and I doubt there’s a fence plier user nearer to a Lowe’s than lots of other places.
Rx9
I do care, because it’s reasonably well made stuff that will go on sale soon enough. They need to stop with the proprietary power tool lines, because they go for a few years and always get orphaned.
BigTimeTommy
Would be fine if they were a reasonably priced “good enough” brand a la Husky. I’m sure they’re fine but Irwin is at Lowe’s and I’m sure you can get a better Irwin version of all those tools at a better price.
Definitely don’t care about them “looking generic” haha. Most of the job sites I work at are outside the jurisdiction of the fashion police.
Nathan
I’ve thought Lowe’s website and app were run by an AI chat bot for a few months now. Very inaccurate. I go to Lowe’s only for the tings I know home Depot nor the local hardware store sells. And that list keeps getting smaller
scott
Lowes is clearancing out lots of the shark-bite products in the Atlanta market. They are doing a major refresh and I picked up lots of odds and ends for 1 to 2 dollars a piece, cheaper than copper solder connectors in most cases, Lowes makes no sense.
mattd
honestly the icon clones of other brand pliers are about the best option for “cheap” pliers currently. I am eagerly waiting to get a set of their knock off snap on LN47ACF slip joint needle nose pliers.
Robm11b
With SBD, and Chervron dominating most of the tool and OPE selections, and Samsung dominating the appliance selection. There is little selection at Lowe’s. Unless you’re in the market for one of the brands, I don’t see a lot of traffic in Lowe’s Which is a shame it’s gone down hill so much, I worked at a Lowe’s a long long time ago and it was great, high quality products for sale, and a good selection of products, now it seems so low end. It’s almost like going to a Menards.
eddiesky
What’s old is new again..in that I no longer want to shop at Lowe’s or Home Depot, but instead cater to the True Values, the Ace Hardware, and the local Ben Moore/Sherwin Williams stores. I don’t have the time for looking for something not there, the idiots in carts, the 95% self-checkouts, and warehouse feel (and fear that something will fall or instock but must get “an agent” to get the mobile stairs and not make a face getting the one item out from box of dozens.
Those pliers are fencing pliers. Unless you have cattle/herd and acres of fencing to deal with…. not really Home Tools. More like Ranch Tools…
I tossed away my last pair of Kobalt pliers because of… Knipex.
Goodie
Yep, I definitely dont’t have time to carefully check the random assortment of all sizes of bolts, nuts, washers and fittings that are so picked through that the size label on the drawer/bin is simply an indicator of what was once in that location.
AK
Like a lot of people, I started out with easy access to and a preference for Made in the US tools (Craftsman from Sears, Channellock, various Cooper brands, etc.).
It feels bad to lose Sears and see the tool aisle at the big box stores, but I now have a fair bit of higher end brands that weren’t so easy to find like Knipex, Wera, Wiha, etc.
Specialty retailers like KC tool with a wide selection and fast/easy availability from Amazon are something we didn’t have ready access to in the past. I remember when seeing Knipex and Wiha in local stores was pretty cool and they became more available over time, but the selection online is more than we ever had at a physical store.
JR Ramos
I learned to never ever put much stock into a house brand – it doesn’t pay to have expectations for it because it will always be in flux and that has increased five times over in recent years. Kobalt being a great example, Husky being another (sorta).
It’s all ODM and save for a few items over the years Kobalt hasn’t usually been anything that you couldn’t find elsewhere in other colors or with the most minor differences. So it’s not surprising that they are “generic” (if that’s still an applicable term at this point) as Lowe’s has clearly put less energy into the line and it’s surely not selling as well as it did during its better heyday. Snowball effect, and that tends to accelerate when the people running the show are more administrative and marketing than they are boots-on-the-ground (that’s always a problem but it’s gotten worse with many and Lowe’s is a great example).
Because of their history I do at least take notice of Kobalt items still but there are only a few things I ended up buying. They’ve had some gems. One that comes to mind is the little mini ratchet socket/bit set and since Gearwrench inexplicably decided to discontinue theirs, Kobalt is the last one standing and I haven’t seen anything else out there put together the same nice way. They have some common rebadged items too, which is convenient because they’re available locally in an instant and sometimes at a better price (similar to many things at Harbor Freight) as opposed to ordering online and waiting. But they’ve been largely disappointing for a few years now and I do not think any items from Kobalt now command any sort of premium pricing over “generic” tools on the market. So that last point is what Lowe’s really needs to struggle with and it’s probably a losing battle that could make the house brand just disappear at some point if they don’t find a way to revive it and pique customers’ interest and satisfaction again. Irwin and Crescent are headed the same direction, even Lenox.
Charles
I dispise going into Lowes. I don’t like alot of there products and there lumber is more like #3 at best and disorganized. Very lazy staff. I think I’ve interacted with one employee that was competent in a very long time. It’s ten minutes closer than home depot but I always leave wishing I’d just drove there to start with.