Tools Without Borders Auburn NY

Source: TOOLS OF THE TRADE Magazine
Publication date: March 1, 2003

By Rick Schwolsky

Tracking the landscape of the tool industry is sort of like mapping Europe since the Cold War ended. Tool manufacturers that built their brands on narrowly defined tool categories are crossing the borders and surprising tool users by branching into broader territories every year.

Professional tool users like you make up a huge market for these companies, and after decades of building brand awareness with their core products, manufacturers are diversifying their lines by capitalizing on their brand names. It's a smart way to grow, as long as each new tool line performs up to the quality of the established tools we've come to know and love from these companies. So far, the new tools I've seen live up to that standard.

There are three ways for tool companies to successfully diversify into new categories. First, they can grow through acquisition, buying out an original manufacturing company and re-branding its products. Second, they can license new products from established manufacturers or unknown OEMs and create a line of their own. Or third, they can re-equip their own manufacturing facilities and make the new tools—from start to finish—in-house. This last approach offers the highest level of control and perhaps quality, but also is the most expensive.