Category Archives: Automotive
Identify This Antique Tool
Watch as Doug Gillis, owner of Skyway Tool Center in Chico, CA and SkywayTools.com, talks about an unusual tool that was brought in to the store recently. Its driving him crazy, because nobody in the area seems to have a clue about this tool, where it was made and what it does. It has no markings on it and has everyone here stumped. Do you know what it is? If so, email and let us know!
We found the answer. It is an antique carpet stretcher and it took us over a month to figure out.
Chain Hoists and Come-a-Longs
Doug Gillis of Skyway Tool Center in Chico, CA poses for a photo with the new stock of American Power Pull chain hoists and come-a-longs that came in this week. American Power Pull makes really sturdy chain hoists and come-a-longs, tools that are used quite a bit in this rural and agricultural community in Northern California. Ranchers and farmers need to have sturdy tools that are going to last and they can’t afford the cost in down time to have cheap, shoddy chain hoists and come-a-longs on their trucks. You get stuck out in a field trying to work on a harvester or grain feeder and you simply cannot afford to waste hours of time having to drive back to town and get the tool you should have bought in the first place, so our ag buyers always get the best.
The buyer at Skyway Tool Center ordered these at the end of September and had been waiting anxiously to get these into stock for the winter months. Farmers and ranchers tend to come in to the store over the winter because that is when they have the time to assess what they will need for the upcoming planting season. Time is money in the ag business, so those with years of experience in ag tend to pre-plan their buying. Thats why Skyway Tool Center owner Doug Gillis says that he usually only sees the farmers and ranchers during the harvest season when something goes haywire. Gillis also says he is delighted to be of service to the farm community in the North Valley area of Northern California, because they are honest, decent, and down-to-earth customers and he considers himself lucky to get to work in a field in which he gets to be of service to them.
CTA Tools Goes Automotive Specialty
Last week ToolsBlog.com owner Sherry Gillis attended the Medco Tool Customer Show in Philadelphia, PA and got a chance to check out the new tools and trends presented by over 100 vendors for two days. There were lots of interesting new tools on the market and some nice sets put together with tools that are already on the market, but one of the most exciting booths at the show was CTA Tools.
CTA Tools was founded by Jack Dreyfus in 1978 as a sister company to Dreyco, Incorporated, which he had also founded and had been running since 1950. Dreyco, Inc. was the company that set up all of the KD Tools export markets during the 1960s and 1970s. When KD Tools later decided to administer all of their export tools in-house, Dreyfus began CTA Tools to compete with their brand. Current CTA Tools President Michael Borghard began working at CTA Tools in 1979 after marrying the daughter of Jack Dreyfus and has been working for the company for the past 35 years.
Originally Borghard worked as a veneer log exporter in New York and had a degree in Wood Products Engineering from attending Forestry School, but was convinced he should go to work in the tool industry by his father-in-law. Borghard’s wife did not necessarily want her husband working in the family business, but the will of the father-in-law prevailed and Borghard joined the CTA Tools team.
Gillis later interviewed Borghard about the CTA Tools business and asked him his opinion on the path his company is taking in today’s tool market and what he sees coming in tool trends today.
Q) Have you changed the direction of your inventory this last few years? If so, why?
A) Absolutely. The two big changes have been with Fluid Service Tools & Euro application tools. With Fluid Service, we came across some very unique products that have done extremely well and built a new market segment for us. European application tools came because so many of our customers kept asking us to expand our range into the category. We were selling a few specialty sockets for VW/Audi at the time. We learned there were limited choices for these types of tools, while at the same time the German & Swedish vehicle populations in North America were growing older and larger.
Q) I noticed you have some specialty tools for Mini Coopers. What made you decide to make specialty tools for that particular make of car? Do you feel there is a very big market for those tools?
A) This ties into my comments above. There were very specific requests for Mini tools and we are now in the process of adding more.
Q) Do you see any particular trends among automotive specialty tools these days?
A) The biggest trend is the explosion of range. Because of the many engineering changes throughout both domestic & import vehicles, the need for more & more specialty tools is never-ending.
Q) How has the recession effected your manufacturing company?
A) What recession? Our growth has never been better during the recent years. Cars age, are on their 2nd, 3rd or 4th owners, independent shops are hungry for business and will work on any car they can, which means more specialty tools.
Q) Do you see a change in the automotive tools industry because of the recession in general? If so, what do you think is on trend for the next few years?
A) The trend we see is with parts getting smaller, lighter and harder to get to. These material and location changes drive our business. Technology is also changing swiftly, but that effects the diagnostic side of the business, which we are not involved with.
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In looking over the new inventory displayed by CTA Tools, Gillis can see they should be making quite a splash in the automotive specialty tools industry.
Construction Market Improving in California
The California construction market has seen an uptick in 2013 that has Californians hopeful that things will begin to roll again with the economy. Construction crews are beginning to get work again after a number of years of little or no projects available to them. Many building contractors and construction workers in California either found other lines of work, got on disability, or retired out during the recession that really got rolling in 2008.
Skyway Tool Center owner Sherry Gillis has seen a trend among the construction workers and other tool buyers this spring and summer. Most construction workers and contractors bought professional level tools in order to have reliable tools to work with on their building projects. Today, many professional end users are buying the rot gut cheapest tools they can find, because they have been off work for so long that they simply cannot afford to spend that extra amount needed to purchase a professional level tool. They either go to the low end tool store with throwaway tools – or they buy used tools.
It will be interesting to see whether this uptick in construction continues to progress in California in the next few years, but for now, there is a little bit of work. Lets hope the trend continues.
Automotive Tool Market Today
The automotive tool market is really changing these days due to the recession in the United States. Automotive tool manufacturers and distributors have streamlined their product lines to better position themselves in the market and have cut many products from their lines. Tool manufacturers cannot afford to produce items that don’t move off of the shelves, so they have stopped manufacturing the slow movers.
Owner Doug Gillis at Skyway Tool Center in Chico, Calfornia has customers calling his store regularly looking for tools that used to be standard, but are now no longer made. For example, he had an online customer looking for a lighted circuit tester a few months ago and quickly discovered that the item is no longer available. His staff searched out suppliers throughout the US to find one, but nobody had that tool in stock. Later they discovered it was a tool that is no longer made, so they then focused on finding a tool that was similar, but it turned out nobody makes an inexpensive, lighted circuit tester anymore. It is not something that is commonly used, so the manufacturer just stopped making it as the result of the recession.
Another trend in the tool industry is that tool stores are fading out of the landscape of American towns. Recently a tool store in Chico, California, Northern California Tool & Supply, went out of business after 75 years. It was a family run business and sadly had to close it’s doors because of the stiff competition in the tool industry. Small tool stores can no longer compete with large retailers like Home Depot, Sears, Lowes and the many tool trucks that drive around and sell directly to the mechanics. Before the recession tool sales were brisk and there was enough business to go around for any reasonably operated tool store, but now it has gotten so cut throat that most tool stores have gone under.
The latest trend is that large online retailers like Amazon, Ebay, Sears and Walmart are acting as storefronts for the manufacturers of tools to sell directly to the public at wholesale prices, which is now cutting the throats of tool businesses and hardware stores nationwide. These online retailers have placed tool manufacturers and tool suppliers in the United States in direct competition with their own customers, the tool and hardware stores. There is no way for the tool and hardware businesses to compete when their pricing structure is higher than the price the manufacturers are charging the public. In other words, it costs as much or more for the local tool retailer to purchase products from the manufacturer today as it does for the public to purchase the exact same item from the manufacturer online.
Tool manufacturers have upset the supply chain nationally by going direct to the public. In the earlier days of the internet the manufacturers and tool suppliers treaded lightly when it came to competing with their own supply chain, but in recent years that has changed. Today’s tool manufacturers leave little to the imagination by selling out of Amazon and competing with the stores that had formerly kept the manufacturers in business for decades. The public love it because they can now buy tools for the same price that the tool or hardware store can, but will there be any downside to this?
The downside is that we have millions of people out of work now, because this is happening in every sector – not just the tool business. In every sector of retail trade, manufacturers have put the businesses out that had kept their products moving for decades. So one of the downsides is that we now have many unemployed workers who can’t afford to buy retail items, even if they are coming directly from the manufacturer and are being sold on the cheap. Another downside is that as the manufacturers increasingly take on the load of supplying the public directly, the buying public will receive less and less service.
Right now a guy can go into a local tool store, look over a tool, hold it, try it out, discuss it with the store employee, then go to Amazon and buy it directly from the manufacturer. Essentially the local tool store has gone to all of the trouble and expense of paying rent on the store, paying for the utilities and a staff to represent the tools, they have purchased thousands of items to display to the public, have spent money on advertising so you know they are around, paid taxes and insurance and everything else that goes with retailing to the public – then the public use them as a free resource. Pretty good idea, isn’t it? The manufacturers don’t even have to provide an ounce of service for their products, because when the thing breaks down, the public will bring it to their local tool store.
Unfortunately, local tool stores are not going to be able to provide the customer service for tools that break or otherwise don’t work that they would have if the customer had made the purchase in the store. If a customer buys an item online directly from the tool manufacturer, they need to be aware that the manufacturers are not set up to provide assistance with problems – thats what they had tool stores for in the past. The regular little retailer provided customer service all across the country, but now will have to send the Amazon customer back to the internet if they need help with the product they purchased online.
Eventually the retail trade will go the way of many other businesses – like the gasoline business. It used to be that there were many local gas stations across our country that were unaffiliated with any particular gasoline wholesaler. They were mom and pop dealers. Today you only have the choice of a few brands of gasoline and you don’t have anyone to wash your windshield, check the air in your tires, check your oil level, or pump that gas when it is pouring down rain or snowing. You have to provide all of that service for yourself and the gas is horribly expensive – it never came down in price as we lost all service.
The sad part about the way the tool manufacturers and suppliers have operated in the last few years is the way they scurried around behind the scenes and cut the throats of the very people that put them in their positions of power and wealth. They set up dummy websites and went on retail sites like Amazon to sell directly to the public, then sent their reps out to sell the stuff they couldn’t move out of their warehouses to their retailers, doubling up their efforts to ruin their customers. The only hope for any tool retailer these days is to find products that are not being hawked by their manufacturers directly to the public – and that is an almost impossible task.
