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Stanley Black & Decker investing $90M to shift more Craftsman production back to US
Stanley Black & Decker announced on Wednesday that it was investing $90 million in a plant in Texas – a move aimed at continuing its effort to shift production of a range of Craftsman products back to the U.S. Opens a New Window.
The new 425,000-square-foot facility will be located in Fort Worth, where tools ranging from sockets, ratchets, wrenches to general sets will be produced.
“When we purchased Craftsman in 2017 we were determined to revitalize this iconic U.S. brand and bring back its American manufacturing heritage," Stanley Black & Decker President and CEO Jim Loree said in a statement. “From the launch of Craftsman's refreshed brand identity last year to our announcement of the first new manufacturing facility in many years, we’re demonstrating our continued commitment to grow the brand and bring even more production of these great products back to the United States.”
Stanley said on Wednesday that Craftsman was on track to reach $1 billion in incremental revenues by 2021. It operates 30 manufacturing facilities in the U.S. – and more than 100 around the world.
Groundbreaking in Fort Worth will occur later this year, with completion expected in late-2020. It will employ about 500 full-time workers.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/stanley-black-decker-craftsman-production
This happened rather suddenly:
OSH was a smaller local option for smaller communities….not any more.
Lowe's closing Orchard Supply Hardware chain it acquired out of bankruptcy
All Orchard Supply Hardware stores in California and elsewhere will close by February, the company’s parent — home-improvement retail giant Lowe’s — announced Wednesday.
The chain, also known as OSH, has 99 locations in California, Oregon and Florida, as well as distribution centers, all of which will close. The move comes five years after Lowe’s bought most OSH stores out of bankruptcy following an ill-fated spinoff from the chain’s former owner, Sears Holdings Corp.
It also comes amid big changes at Lowe’s that may have sparked a rethinking of OSH’s place within the larger firm. Lowe’s named Marvin R. Ellison, the former top executive at J.C. Penney, as its president and chief executive effective last month.
Ellison told investors in a conference call Wednesday that OSH, which operates stores much smaller than Lowe’s locations, was not running well. Even if it were performing better, he said OSH could never become a big part of the company’s overall business.
“It became clear to me we wanted to be focused on our core retail business,” Ellison said. He added that even if Orchard were a much larger business, it would “have very small benefit to the shareholders.”
OSH last year posted sales of $600 million — less than 1% of Lowe’s overall sales of $68.6 billion, executives said.
OSH, founded in San Jose in 1931, started out as a co-op supplying fruit growers in the days when what’s now Silicon Valley was filled with orchards. It grew into a more general hardware store, one that in recent years catered to homeowners and do-it-yourselfers, setting it apart from contractor-focused big-box retailers Lowe’s and Home Depot.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-osh-closure-20180822-story.html