Stanley Black & Decker and Home Depot have formed a new partnership, where Home Depot will be the exclusive home improvement retailer for Stanley and Stanley FatMax brands.
Thank you to Ian for bringing this to my attention!
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The release says that with this new arrangement, the two companies are entering into one of the largest exclusivity partnerships in the tools and storage industry.
STANLEY announces today that The Home Depot will now be the exclusive home improvement retailer for its STANLEY hand tools and storage product portfolio, both in store and online, beginning in 2019. In addition, The Home Depot will also garner exclusivity across the STANLEY FATMAX product line…
The press release mentions that Home Depot will be the exclusive home improvement retailer, and so it remains unclear as to whether other sources, such as Walmart and Target, will be affected. (They probably won’t be, since they’re not direct competitors to typical home improvement chains.)
This adds to two other existing exclusivity arrangements between Stanley Black & Decker and Home Depot, involving Dewalt hand tools and FlexVolt cordless power tools.
Lowes and Stanley Black & Decker have their own Craftsman tools partnership, with that arrangement having been announced one year ago.
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It is too early to predict how this new development will affect the tool landscape at both Home Depot and Lowes. One thing is all but certain, and it’s that we are bound to see big changes in the months to come.
Tim
Didnt they just finish replacing all their stanley tools on the shelves with Milwaukee, Dewalt, Husky and others?
Seems like they did.
Luis R.
It seems Stanley Black & Decker are the smart ones here, They use Irwing and Lennox for Smaller retailers, Craftsman for Lowes and now Stanley Fatmax for HD, We can buy the wxact same tool from corner hardware, Lowes or Home Depot just with different logos and colors on them, Its a mater if who will have the best deal ir what you are closer to.
CT
Yup, and with different SKUs it makes it harder to price compare so retailers are willing to spend more for the exclusive deals.
CT
Getting out of Walmart and Target can only help the Stanley brand. Maybe they rebrand the lower end tools as Black & Decker?
I can see the Porter Cable brand making a similar move. It’s basically redundant with Craftsman at Lowes but SBD has no comparable product at Home Depot.
Nate
I could see Porter Cable going to Walmart, i think that would sell more the than the junk Black & Decker there now.
Vic
Walmart target are not home improvement retailer. So they can sell it.
Brandon
Aaagh. A fifth of the hand tool aisle at Menard’s is Stanley. Menard’s is pretty good at sourcing quality stuff (Knipex, Masterforce-branded US-made sockets, US-made Johnson levels, etc) so I have high hopes they’ll find a decent alternative, but we’ll see…
Nathan S
Unfortunately, Menards just ditched their US-made Masterforce sockets / wrenches. The last bit are currently on closeout at my local store.
Ryan
True story. Been watching this happen around me..just when I was getting in to them a little.
aaron
My Lowe’s has red Dot stickers on the shelf labels on most of the Stanley fatmax stuff. The tools section guy says that means when the space gets deleted it will be replaced with Craftsman stuff
Bolt
Don’t care. All the same stuff will be at every other store under a different name.
The yeti
Aint that the truth.
Cameron
Yep. If you want red, go to Lowes, if you want yellow, go to HD.
Corey
This explains why I’ve been about to stock up on misc Stanley stuff at Walmart on clearance. Speed square $3, 30′ laser distance measurer $5, ect. It’s been nice lol
Adam
I thought the FlexVolt exclusivity was only for one season, but seems closer to 2 years now. I’m overall fine with the setup, but what is a pain is that Lowes doesn’t sell the flex-volt battery. Usually you wont end up in a situation where you are out of batteries, but if I was buying a new bare tools at Lowes, I probably wouldn’t get a battery there if it wasn’t as capable as the one down the street for potentially other tools I might have or get.
Redcastle
The UK equivalent of Home Depot sells off the top of my head Ryobi, Einhell, Stanley Fatmax, Bosch and in their trade orientated stores within stores DeWalt plus a never ending series of house brand power tools and a similarly broad selection of hand tools including Stanley, Estwing, Irwin etc. They do price differentiate between Stanley and DeWalt tools which otherwise appear very similar but DeWalt is perceived as a premium brand. Black & Decker appears on an opportunistic basis at various times of the year normally on very old fashioned and low price tools even the Workmates are a shadow of their formal selves. I have said on a number of occasions it would be a kindness for them to put Black & Decker out of its misery.
Matt Jones
Pretty sure I called this move a couple of weeks ago in one of the Craftsman posts. Makes sense for SBD, makes sense for Lowes and HD to potentially grab loyal fans (although I think Lowes wins that one at least with uneducated consumers). Consumers don’t really lose out either as the tools seem to be pretty much the same with different brandings across the retailers, but this’ll likely annoy and confuse people in the short term.
Charles
Well, the battery powered tools might have similar specs but they seem to be incompatible with each other for batteries and chargers.
As for hand tools, if it says “Made in USA” I’m fine with it. With all the buying/selling/rebranding of manufacturers recently it’s not possible to keep track of who makes what unless you’re a tool junkie. Every local retailer’s sales associate (Theisen’s, Lowes, Home Depot, Menards) has got the details of who is making what wrong, as well as who bought who. Had a Theisen’s guy tell me that Craftsman bought DeWalt the other day. As long as it doesn’t say “Made in China” or ” Made in USA of domestic and imported components” I’m fine with it. I’ll accept “Made in Israel” and “Made in Taiwan” too.
Matthew
I just want SBD to raise the floor on the quality of their offerings. I shouldn’t be debating if the price difference between Stanley and HF is justified or just in the name. I don’t have a need for high end Snap-on or MAC or pick a brand that professional mechanics use, but I do want to upgrade the crappy Kobalt sockets and ratchets I’ve had for years. I have been patiently waiting for either improved Craftsman or improved Stanley since SBD got the brand from Sears. If neither happens in the next few months I guess it’ll be Pittsburgh Pro or Northern Tool? (At least there is a matching warranty with no question where the tools came from.)
satch
My first thought was Menard’s. A significant amount of shelf real estate is filled with Stanley branded hand tools. They also have nearly half a long shelf on aisle in our store filled with Stanley tool boxes and the Stanley version of Fat Max TSTAK. It may pay to look for closeouts when this deal comes gets close.
Now about Menard’s. I love our store. It is huge, the employees are nice, and the place has loads of materials. The power tool section is thin though in name brands. At least what we think of more ‘upscale DIY'(boy do I despise this faux niche SBD created when they leveraged P-C into it after acquisition) and pro brands. They have Bosch and an assortment of Skil(very thin), Master Force(diy/cheap dubious Chinese stuff), some Worx, and very low end B&D, and nothing else. At least not in store. They are going to need to step up their game if they want to compete against these exclusives.
As weird as it sounds, I wonder if Porter-Cable will wind up at Menard’s? I really do not want that. With its placement below pro or even prosumer brands I don’t know if it would sell. And you would still have only their limited in store selection of Bosch at the pro end. And as far as I know, there is no P-C equivalent to the toolboxes and TSTAK stuff. And I am not sure how the SBDC placement with Lowe’s figures into it.
I am really not sure how Menard’s fits into all this. We have only had the store for two years or so and I am not sure how they fit into the tool selling mix.
Ryan
Always have had a weird mic of tools but I love menards some days…you as re forgetting Hitachi or now Metabo HPT…but none the less an odd mix of mostly all green tool.brands lol
Nathan
So now we have to shop that much more carefully. Great. I mean if the stanley tool box is similar feature set to the dewalt and is cheap enough great.
BUT – if the Craftsman red one at Lowes is the same and yet cheaper – so be it.
BUT if I have to shop at ______________ to get ___________ while comparing ________ and _________ and then checking CPO Outlet for _________ and ACME tool for ___________
etc etc. It might work out but seems like too much.
928'er
If its the chinese version of FATMAX tools they can keep ’em…
Jim Felt
This all seems so “corporate”… This may well help the true independent pro centric local and regional sellers the most. We can only hope!
Here in the Pacific Northwest HD just owns Lowe’s. Lowe’s has nearly zero pro sales. Mostly lost DIYers and housewives. HD has a daily line of pickups, trailers and flatbeds lined up to load out.
And the only market disruptor was Orchard Hardware and the new CEO of Lowe’s jettisoned all their stores a month or two ago. As they only represented “less then $1B of Lowe’s revenues” so why bother. Nice?
So here we are. As for Menard’s they’re no where out here. And there’s no longer any potential competitor to the big two. Two?
Did I mention Eddie Lambert’s vampire move on Sears. Naw. Why bother.
MichaelHammer
Gettin dumb at high rates of speed. My HD doesn’t have the 16’ autolock fatmax. Lowe’s has it, though. Only reason I step into that store is to buy a new tape measure every 4 to 6 months. Now what? I have to buy it at the world’s worst online retailer, HD. Swell, can’t wait. Anyone know what the geniuses who write the search engine might call it? Every time I use their site, it is abundantly clear that they know nothing about what HD sells. This is terrible news.
Toolfreak
I suspect Walmart and Target will keep most if not all of the current Stanley stuff they sell, alongslide the Black & Decker tools as well. I don’t foresee SBD pulling out of the two largest retailers, though maybe they will repackage things as orange Black & Decker hand tools rather than yellow/green Stanley, they’ve done that plenty of times before and included things in Black & Decker tool sets.
This seems dumb overall and a lot of hassle for not much benefit, but maybe it was SBDs way of appeasing HD and making the most of the Craftsman brand by having it just at Lowe’s/Ace for now, though I really don’t see them not spreading it to a lot more places in the future.
JoeM
Wow… Canada is SERIOUSLY going to mess that deal up for SBD and Home Depot… Stanley tools have been treated as a House Brand at Canadian Tire stores for decades. The ACTUAL house brands, Jobmate and Mastercraft/MastercraftMAXIMUM, are actually made by SBD and its low-end factories.
The vast majority of Stanley/FatMAX stuff in Canada is bought through Canadian Tire, and most Home Depot stores here stock DeWALT versions due to a lack of Stanley licenses. Canadian Tire has more buying power than Home Depot in Canada. It should be interesting to see this exclusivity deal fall through up North here.
ktash
Musical chairs! Right now I’m glad my high end 18v tool platform is Makita, but then what if Home Depot no longer carries it much because they are shuffling their shelf space around?
Makita circular saws, both corded and cordless are the best! The oem blades are better than any other saw that would be sold through these outlets (don’t know about Mafell, for instance). I hope they remain independent and can continue to compete in the U.S., that is.
Today I was looking at some Stanley planes that I’ve refurbished and thought about how Stanley used to make good, solid reliable handplanes (kind of like Sears quality that you’d hand down to generations). But then there’s the musical chairs thing and they might get ground to dust. It’s not nostalgia I’m talking about, but a kind of “tool infrastructure” that can’t be replaced. It was built up over time. Sold to the highest bidder to milk dry. Quality of life declines when we lose infrastructure.
Ian
From SBD it doesnt make sense to me, as in HD, they are now competing DW hand tools, with Stanley FatMax (which already have a pretty good reputation), but are cheaper, and then throw Husky into the mix.
Most people don’t have hand tool brand loyalty, other than some specific industries (Klein – electricians, Snap-On – mechanics), they know there are several good pro brands they can use, who make very similar quality tools. So if they need a pair of long nose 8″ pliers and are in HD, they’ll look at SBD, Husky, Channelok or Milwuakee, and buy based on price.
It also a no win for HD, as it puts even more pressure on their Husky brand.
Plus it will dilute the Stanley brand if only sold through HD, as currently they are available everywhere, and are people’s first tools, and they meet 80% most people’s needs.
ToolOfTheTrade
What’s puzzling is that out of all of the places that sell fatmax, HD carries the least amount of fatmax tools between them, Lowes, Ace Hardware, Walmart, etc. So why would sbd exclusively choose HD. HD has enough hand tools brands as it is. Maybe they’ll get rid of the hdx for the fatmax. It seems like a desperate attempt to for sbd to find somewhere to put fatmax because they’re obviously going to flood Lowes with craftsman and I guess they’re trying to disassociate themselves with Walmart. I wonder if sbd’s craftsman is going to make Craftsman Industrial Line tools? They were the ones with the red rectangle that were commercial grade shop tools. Was that included in the deal when sbd bought em? They’ll probably just let Lampert take it down with the rest of the ship. I’m sure they’ll bail on it. I don’t think sbd has ever made industrial grade stuff, so why wouldn’t they in their rebranding of Craftsman? They’ve somehow managed to fumble both fatmax and porter cable simultaneously for the sake of craftsman, so I hope sbd is gonna come correct with their craftsman offerings. If not then it will be another fine job of the mismanagement exhibited by sbd’s brass of highly paid morons. Speaking of fatmax, it would be cool to see fatmax power tools being sold at HD. There are none that are currently sold in the US. They seem to do well in the UK and elsewhere and they are not cheap and very few online retailers sell them. Stanley fatmax makes a hell of a lot more tools than what is sold at Walmart HD and Lowes or what is available in the US. It would be a pity to see porter cable end up on the shelves at Walmart.
CT
Stanley Fatmax power tools are sold in the US under the Porter Cable label. Same exact tool with a different color molding.
Craftsman Guy
Actually they are exactly the same as craftsman v20 cordless tools. They’re even called stanley v20
Taras
SBD already has a few high end industrial brands. See here -. https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Ian
Porter cable are on sale in the Walmart pro-tools section now