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Hacker News Hacker NewsSo market fit is driving both worse and better products at the same time. Cheap DIYers like me are buying the cheapest stuff we can find, and complaining that it's as cheap as its price. My neighbor the contractor buys the expensive stuff and finds that the quality at least somewhat reflects that.
Worse on purpose is my fault, because I'm the guy who bought a cheap Ryobi saw, instead of none at all. Plane flights are worse because I'm the guy who buys the cheapest ticket and tolerates the resulting discomforts, instead of staying home. You can see that through the lens of greed and exploitation, or as just a market evolving to supply consumer demand.
Shout out to TTI for keeping Ryobi cheap, cheerful, and a good value. Not my cup of tea, but their stuff is reasonably fine for the price.
Wiha is a family-owned private company in Germany. Relies on self-funding and conservative growth using long-standing relationships with German banks rather than private equity. They manufacture in Germany, Vietnam, Switzerland, and a tiny plant in the US. Well known by electricians. Much better warranty.
Wera is also privately owned, by Bitburger Holding. They avoid debt financing and focus on high-volume production and advertising. Almost all of their manufacturing has left Germany, and is now Czech Republic and Thailand. Well known by auto mechanics. Limited warranty.
There are some exceptions in every product line, but the current crop of power tools are actually pretty good. If you know people in the trades they can tell you which specific products are best in each category because trades people are generally very good at sharing that info on social media with each other.
> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is.
Interchangeable batteries got really good and made every set of tools a platform. More importantly, there are only a handful of sources to get batteries from. For all these companies to differentiate and compete they needed to insert their products into wide lines of platforms.
https://www.youtube.com/c/projectfarm
One of the best review channels for products in this area. I moved from DeWalt to Milwaukee for most of my daily drivers about six years ago and have been very happy with them, but for things I will rarely use I tend to go with whatever Harbor Freight is selling. If I break it then it's time to upgrade.
Pseudo related is I really enjoy well designed lifestyle DIY tool brands like HOTO, started with slick electric screw drivers for building PCs, and now pretty DIY kits that's nice to look at on small projects.
I'm not saying this site doesn't speak some truths, but previous on this topic have been so thin, and ignore battery, motor and materials improvements that they totally undercut a real discussion on tool quality and value. If you actually want to talk tools, find a DIY/woodworking group.
> If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it
Dang, feel free to let me know if this is an inappropriate use of flagging.
It was far from perfect — the backpack was not so comfortable and a bit heavy, and it was expensive. Still, the market was obviously growing and is currently booming, and DeWalt should have been a leader.
Instead they never followed up, and they gave everyone who bought one a giant “screw you” by discontinuing the batteries. And left the market wide open for new players and the big gas landscape tool companies (Stihl, Husqvarna) to step in.
Attention executives: when you lead the market in a growing category, you need to invest in it!
There is a specific Hilti tool that allows concrete anchors to be shot in without powder, which lets us work in occupied spaces during regular hours instead of on double time, it’s $1,000 but pays for itself in a day: https://www.hilti.com/c/CLS_POWER_TOOLS_7125/CLS_DIRECT_FAST...
All power tools anre engineered for the bathtub curve. My guys like Milwaukee because the Makita portaband (metal bandsaw for cutting conduit) has a crappy tensioner and the blade falls off every 10 cuts. I’d rather pay someone not to keep putting a blade back on. I have no special love for Milwaukee, but one of the fundamental electrician power tools being that much more reliable makes buying into the whole line worth it.
It’s not always about the cost of the tool itself, but minimizing downtime when labor costs over $100/hr
> This isn't a tools story.
> The names change. The industries change. The strategy doesn’t.
The pattern
This isn't an insightful blog.
The names change. The topics change. The slop doesn’t.
WFM. YMMV.
How can we convince business owners to take this path? It seems in a future everything will be owned by a few megacorps and crappyfied.
Professional builders, craftsman and people who care about their art care about these things.
The people that these companies are selling to (Home Depot “weekend warriors”) do not care about these things which is why they continue to sell despite the alternative existing at a higher price point
And even most entry-level professionals these days are using whatever they can get. I went to a yard sale in Manassas Virginia which is very blue-collar and mostly people working on houses and mowing lawns and things and somebody was selling all of their DeWalt tools because they just bought a new set for cheaper than they could’ve bought a really solid tool.
They mentioned Eye Wear is next, I think the author can guess where that is going. No reason to doubt the same will happen to that industry too.
The "high quality ones" that have their own R&D and manufacturing, are very expensive and out of reach for a lot of people.
So when your reputation is big you can slack on the product. Or is that naive? Is it the natural progression for all products?
Like in that movie Brasil. The food is awful but the illustration of the food is wonderful.