Stanley Black & Decker (SBD) plans a broad expansion of the licensing program surrounding the Craftsman brand in 2019, with about 40 licensees generating 600 SKUs. Between core and licensed products, the brand is expected to appear in 100 merchandise categories, up from 60 in 2018,  says SBD’s Todd Snellenburg.

About 100 Craftsman products from 20 licensees, including power washers (Briggs & Stratton) and flashlights (GreatStar), have shipped this year to Amazon, Lowe’s, Ace Hardware and Blain’s Farm & Fleet in the U.S. and Rona Inc. in Canada. SBD purchased the brand from Sears in 2017.

With the added distribution – Sears had largely confined Craftsman to its own stores and Ace — the brand is being positioned between SBD’s higher-end DeWalt and the lower-priced Black & Decker, Stanley and Porter Cable labels.

“Craftsman is unique in that it can stretch from the mid-price to the pro space depending on the user and channel of distribution,” says Senior Product Manager Tyson Harris. “We needed to fill the mid-price and that is where Craftsman fits so well since it stretches a little into Black & Decker and DeWalt. That allows us to retain the industrial credibility of DeWalt and those do-it-yourself consumer products of Black & Decker. It’s more of a trades-driven line.”

Craftsman brand encompasses four major segments – construction. storage, automotive and outdoor – that mix core and licensed products. For example, SBD is supplying the bulk of the corded and cordless outdoor products (blowers, string trimmers), while licensee MTD Products (in which SBD purchased a 20% stake earlier this year) provides walking and riding lawnmowers, snow blowers and other gas-powered products.

“We are driving products” with licensees “that are adjacent to our core” but “from the colors and packaging down to the warning labels we want to make sure it all feels and looks the same,” says Craftsman Licensing Manager Jason Brodbeck.

Snellenburg acknowledges that the brand has been tarnished by Sears’ travails. “There has been a little bit of rub-off and the perception sometimes is that it doesn’t represent the quality it used to,” says Snellenberg. SBD is responding with a revamped web site due in early 2019, as well as Facebook and Instagram campaigns. It’s coupling those initiatives with sponsorships such as NASCAR and Richard Rawlings’ Gas Monkey Garage (a Dallas facility that is home to Discovery Channel’s Fast ‘N Loud car restoration show) to “tell the story that we are driving quality, value and innovation back” into the brand, says Snellenburg.

To insure a steady flow of product development, the Craftsman brand will potentially draw on SBD groups like the Stanley + Techstars Additive Manufacturing Accelerator that opened in Hartford, CT earlier this year with 10 startups and their founders. “We have these labs that we can potentially use to put new ideas out to our licensees for consideration, and while that isn’t the case yet, we do want to be thinking three to five years out,” says Snellenburg.

Contact:

Beanstalk, Caren Chacko, VP of Brand Management, 212 303 1112, Caren.Chacko@beanstalk.com

Stanley Black & Decker, Todd Snellenburg, VP Global Licensing, 443-927-5483, todd.snellenburg@sbdinc.com