Special times, special tools

By Staff -- Industrial Distribution, 8/1/2000

Applications for hand tools are changing rapidly as business and society become wired. Wired for e-commerce transactions and wired for a distributorship's sales team to be kept electronically in the loop.

Thus, hand tools such as strippers, pliers, screwdrivers and the like are becoming smaller, more refined and able to work in tight spaces. Cabling winding its way through office walls and warehouse cubbies requires needle-nose pliers and hand tools with pivots.

Hand tool manufacturers and distributors must keep pace with electronic advances as businesses' need for data collection, computer functioning, telecommuting and fiber optic systems becomes greater everyday. As a result, the demand for hand tools to meet the electronics industries' needs is strong. There are a number of other changes being made in hand tool design. For instance, many hand tools, especially non-powered models, are becoming lighter to hold and easier to grip. Some hammers and mallets have a stronger striking power yet are designed to impact the working surface with less bounce-back and surface defacing. With a nod to ergonomics and employee safety, hammers and other hand tools are less susceptible to electric shock.

Hand tool applications have changed, just as product sourcing for such hand tools has changed. The quality of a hand tool line remains key to an industrial buyer but so does price.

With that in mind, the bar is being raised for competition between U.S.-made and imported hand tools.

"We care about quality, but we care about the price too," is what distributorships' purchasing agents are likely to hear today, according to Mike Nelson, a market analyst for Racine, Wis.-based A & E Manufacturing. The tool manufacturing company's primary product line is ratcheting box wrenches, feeler gauges, automotive specialty tools, thread restorer taps and dies, axle nut sockets and diagnostic equipment. If industrial buyers have doubted the quality of Far Eastern-made hand tools, there's less doubt today, Nelson explains. The quality of such imported tools has come up significantly and their lower unit prices can undercut a made-in-America hand tool product line.

Contrast that with a prediction by the Freedonia Group that U.S. demand for powered and non-powered hand tools "will grow over four percent annually to $13.5 billion in 2004." That's a 22 percent anticipated increase. Meanwhile, professional users of all hand tools are expected to "continue to comprise over two-thirds of the market," as described in the study's overview.

Drawing the lines of competition in the proverbial sand, what will be left beyond price, quality or specialized knowledge of the product to influence an industrial purchaser's decision on hand tools? Methods of distribution, namely e-commerce (business to business) sales suggests Nelson. Plus, balancing the trade deficit caused by imports of hand tools to the U.S. by exporting hand tools to other continents, which A & E does now. And, Nelson says, we compete with imports through technology, new products and new patents.

Hand tools will continue to be refined, and existing products made even better. Research shows 92 percent of hand tool distributors make brand recommendations to their customers. Supporting these brand recommendations, at least for powered and non-powered hand tools made in the U.S. A., are Federal Trade Commission guidelines. Trade organizations such as the Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Hand Tool Institute further supports the interests of the non-powered hand tool manufacturing industry.