Power carved "Chubby Birdlet"

[C-Bag]

Jon,

I hope the brick-and-mortar Harbor Freight stores will remain a viable enterprise. I get a lot of enjoyment and ideas just walking around these stores. I am sure my buying habits are not helping them but it is more for my time management. The one commodity we don't have a lot of is our time. I see Macy's is hiring an eBay exec to be their next president in September and one reason was to improve the speed of decision making at Macy's. The eBay exec is hands-on type of guy and in fact he became an eBay top-rated seller in order to experience the selling first-hand and then improve the experience for other sellers on the site.

Paul

Thanks for that Paul, I didn't know that. That's a rare CEO that actually gets down in there and experiences his company from the "workers" POV.

One of the THE best upgrades I did was upgrade to a Foredom. The flexibility and power(I got the most powerful one I could find off eBay used) is light years from the old Dremel we've had forever.

To what Tuomas said, it is hard to understand the lack of brand loyalty/support. That's what makes buying Harbor Freight tools in store hard. You see in a lot of instances two and sometimes three of the same power tool laying side by side with varying prices and colors. Not until you go online do you see there are different ratings on them. Some suck, and the other is great. Obviously because there is a different "factory" making the same thing in China. Not until I read that book Poorly Made in China did the whole thing make sense. It is truly the Wild West over there with outfits coming and going because they are chasing their niche I can only guess.

But you have folks copying a tool they don't know or use for a market they don't understand except they see a possibility of profit. If they do it right and the distribution happens they hang around and when something happens like the market is flooded and orders go down, they hop to the next one completely abandoning it. Maybe somebody else will pick it back up, more than likely not.

It's not how I would do it, but this manufacturing by ADD seems the way now. Customer support and the ability to maintain the machine/tool into the future is not in any way a concern. And in this world of diminishing resources and volatile economic trends it seems to be getting worse.

The last couple of times I've been in HFT there has been a trend away from metal working machines. The metal beader went away, 9x20 lathe went away. Several others. Guess they flooded their market. Luckily Grizzly has picked up the ball and still sells their version and supply parts.

I have no idea where it will go but if they keep messing w/China I can only see drastic change. Good or bad it will be a mixed lot for sure.