Harbor Freight (arrogance)

It was dead inventory because it was overpriced crap that no one wanted. It wasn't because they sold too many loss-leaders.

Sears was a Titanic with no rudder. Seeing the future would have meant dismantling the present. That's exceedingly rare. "Creative destruction" is the term.

Then there is the problem that Amazon made no money for a decade (longer?). Sears' stockholders would never have allowed that.

Kodak had a little bit of a problem seeing the future also.

I tried to order the collet from Amazon. The only seller (Shaper) wanted $10 shipping for a $50 part. They're as bad as Woodpeckers. I've gotten as far as the checkout page at Woodpeckers and just deleted everything because the shipping costs were absurd. I did the same with Shaper.

Highland does a good job stocking Festool. They had the edge sanding widget when it came out (though the store was closed for over a year). Woodcraft didn't know it existed. Still don't. Highland is out of the collets but their catalog says they'll be back in stock in a week or two. They said they try to keep five Origins and workstations in stock at all times. It's a well run family operation but obviously not as large as Hartsville.

If anyone is buying stationary tools, WoodWerks didn't charge sales tax (and minimal shipping) on my jointer. I don't know how they got away with it but they did. They only collected Ohio and a couple of surrounding states' tax.

I went to their site (homedepot.com). It said they were "not orderable" for delivery to store or home.

I could understand the brick stores only carrying 16" wires and not

Actually, I have a box of 12" wires but I have no idea why. I don't know why I've been carting them around the country, either. I must have moved them four times.

That's not surprising. ACE stores are franchised. The stores probably have different owners, even.

We went the other way but we check out HD and Lowes for ideas.

I'm going to tile the floors in at least three of the bathrooms and the laundry. The master is tiled but it's ugly, so would be the fourth.

The "hardwood" floors are starting to buckle so we have to replace them, too. We browse HD when we're there. They never have exactly what we want but it gives us ideas. The stock rotates rather often so it's useful to check it out every few months.

Right. Amazon is no longer cheaper but they, or one of their affiliates, has "everything". I've often gone shopping at Amazon then ordered elsewhere. OTOH, some prices are controlled by the manufacturer and most Amazon stores offer free shipping.

But they did see the future. They had some of the first/finest professional digital cameras. With their overhead, they couldn't scale them down to amateur photographers. Canon, Nikon, and Olympus did, then they lost to cell phones.

Anyone remember Motorola? Blackberry?

Panasonic with Plasma -> LED TVs. And a whole pile of personal products. US -> Japan -> Korea and China. Panasonic is entirely business to business now.

IBM twice, from mainframes to PCs, and PCs to servers (essentially expensive PCs). Servers to out of the hardware business. Now, splitting into two companies. I hope they last another 15-20 years. ;-)

Well, they did buy the Weather Channel. I wonder how much money it makes.

Only 52 of the Fortune 500 companies on the list in 1955 are on it today.

"Change" is difficult. I guess especially if you're a huge organization, not as hard for a small shop. I was listening to someone speak about this earlier today (ex-CEO of the GAP) on "Wall Street Week", he said it's easier to be creative if you are small. And he definitely thought it was very important that people work together face-to-face, so that they can share their creativity and bounce ideas off of one another. Of course, his specialty was clothing in retail. Ironically, he didn't seem to know so much about the financial end of it, except he didn't agree with the notion of a retail outlet having "sales"--because then people will wait for them, compare prices to get them, etc.

Kodak's problem wasn't lack of vision, it was that their business model was to sell a consumable and digital doesn't have consumables in the same sense as film cameras.

Contrary to popular belief, Kodak went into digital early. They had a working prototype digital camera in 1975. The resolution of available sensors at the time was far too low to be commercially viable, the prediction was that it might be able to compete with 110 film by around 1995. And in 1996 Kodak started selling digital cameras.

Further, until their patent expired in 2007 it was a money maker for them.

But there just wasn't a way to transition their business to digital and maintain the same kind of sales volume.

There wasn't anything they could do to keep their business from collapsing. The total digital camera market is estimated to be around $21 billion a year. Corrected for inflation Kodak's peak sales were over $28 billion. So even if they maintained 100% of the market they would have ended up a smaller company.

Forgot about that. I could not understand why people were still investing so much in a company with no profits. Guess I was the shortsighted one.

Still pretty strong. Prints of digital files are still pretty strong and there are plenty of stores offering this service.

So yes digital still has consumables. People still want prints/hard copies of the pictures that they take.

FaceBook

Shaper ships for free with a minimum $75 order. Add a roll or two of double stick tape or a couple of bits.

I bought the edge sanding attachment and the sander to work with it about a year ago, locally through a hard wood dealer. They are such a small Festool dealer that no one realized these hard to find accessories would be at this lumber yard.

It is up to the individual states to "enforce" their sales tax laws. This happened in Texas for many many years but lately most any retail sale is taxed and collected for sales in Texas these days.

IIRC technically the business collects sales tax "FOR" the state that the goods will be delivered to. If sales tax was collected it would need to be submitted to those states.

AND I live is a PIA location as far as sales tax is concerned. We have to determine which taxing authorities that I/we sell to and that may change if the customer picks up from us vs. us delivering. I think it has to do with where the customer was when paying for the item. If i deliver to a different taxing authority area I charge that particular tax.

That said it has relatively gotten a bit easier as these authorities have expanded to where I live. In particular the metro transit authority.

I have to say that this is one of the liveliest threads I've seen in my 30 years or so of reading, and sporadically participating, on this rec.... ;~)

We've all had different but similar experiences with HF. My father bought a lot of stuff from them over the years and I used a lot of it when I helped him at his house. Some things were okay for one off purposes, some were okay over all, some were totally useless--best you could say is they looked like tools.

Just one category, corded power tools, I went a different route and bought all Porter Cable: 587 Speedtronic circular saw, 314 trim saw, router, jig saw, reciprocating saw, 3/8" drill, drywall driver, heat gun, random orbit sander, 4" belt sander, palm sander... Some of that stuff is 30+ years old now. I replaced things like cords on a few of them and pads on the sanders... I built additions and houses, did multiple renovations, and a lot of woodworking projects with them. With care and on-going maintenance I'll probably have them until my demise (hopefully in another 20+ years). The only one I replaced was the random orbit sander and that was maybe a month ago... the pads were worn out again, the dust "bag" was worn out again, the dust port rotated around the handle on it's own... it was time to go! Those P-C tools were from a time when P-C stuff was really built to last. The new stuff... not so much from what I've seen.

Hand tools... I broke my father's HF ratchet wrench handle and breaker bar working on his zero turn mower. The HF drywall driver could not be adjusted and hold the adjustment. The 1/2" drill's body broke due to the torque! Screw driver tips would wear out seemingly instantly. Clamps slipped no matter what you did. Pneumatic nailers... some worked okay and some jammed constantly. No thanks, I bring my own tools to my parents' house now when something needs to be done.

HF opened a store on my travel path within the past few years. I did in buy a cheap cargo net to throw over firewood in the pickup truck. The way and amount I of firewood I stack in the truck made it pretty much impossible for any to fly out on the highway. However, the net looks good to anyone looking for a "secured load" in my state which demands loads be secured.

My son is looking for a modestly priced rolling tool chest. I noticed one at HF that has much better customer feed back than ones from Sears and other big box stores and the price is very competitive. As someone else said early on in this thread... be selective when shopping at HF!

When digital first started I had no interest. Quality sucked. Can't compete with my Olympus OM-2. Then one day, they got better.

No way would I go back to film now and my printer makes great copies too with the right paper.

I still prefer slow film over digital for quality. But that is too much trouble any more. I used to love working with ASA 25 and 64.

I switched from Canon SLR's several years ago, I had a Canon TX, AE1, A1, 650, and a 630.

I really liked the lenses before auto-focus.

For what ever reason I went to a couple of Fuji upper end fixed lens digital and got great results for a digital camera.

A few years back I decided to switch to a Nikon D500. With covid I have not had much od a chance of using it. BUT the auto-focus, lock on, and track a moving object, and a bunch of frames per second is pretty cool.

I caught this one on a string of about 20 frames.

I have a few HF corded tools that were OK. I have one of their $100

I did the same. After being totally disgusted with Craftsman power tools, I went PC. You're right. They were good, until they weren't. They started competing with Craftsman for the bottom. The PC plate jointer was (is?) considered the top of the heap. I used mine once and threw it back in the cabinet, where it remains. What junk.

I bought a couple of the tool cart style (five drawer) for $179. It's certainly good and worth every penny of $179. The rest of my cabinets are from Sam's Club, the Classics Sevelle series. The drawers are chin cy but everything else is very nice. The workbenches, in particular are nice. Really heavy with a 1-1/2" maple top, They're excellent bargains at $240.

JC Penney's "new" (fiveish years back) thought the same thing and killed a zombie. Sales were the only reason people set foot in the dinosaur.

"Sales" are how you move dead merchandise out of the way for new stuff. I guess TJ Max works too,

Kodak was more of a chemical company than a camera company. They didn't only make film and developer.

Far fewer and accepting much lower quality. Most just want snapshots of the grandchildren. Those are the _only_ photographs in our house. Most of them are gypped off Facebook.