Harbor Freight Tools that don't suck

[Travelover]

My son was looking through some 20+ year old Wood Magazines and noticed they had full page HF ads in them that long ago! What caught our eye was that there was no website listed, and there were several name brand tools listed (Dewalt, Stanley, Delta). All items in the add had free shipping too, even the Delta table saw.

The tools were more expensive back then than now, not even adjusting for inflation.

 

[dragoneggs]

My son was looking through some 20+ year old Wood Magazines and noticed they had full page HF ads in them that long ago! What caught our eye was that there was no website listed, and there were several name brand tools listed (Dewalt, Stanley, Delta). All items in the add had free shipping too, even the Delta table saw.

Some may find this article interesting albeit old itself... Pizza Hut was a pioneer, even before Amazon and Ebay!
The History of Online Shopping in Nutshell | InstantShift

 

[DFB]

My son was looking through some 20+ year old Wood Magazines and noticed they had full page HF ads in them that long ago! What caught our eye was that there was no website listed, and there were several name brand tools listed (Dewalt, Stanley, Delta). All items in the add had free shipping too, even the Delta table saw.

Shoot THOSE were even full color ads...I can remember the grainy B & W pictures on different colored sheets of paper all stuffed in an envelope...long before the majority of us generally had internet access.

Be great to find one those early mailings buried away somewhere just for grins

 

[California]

Your mimeographed HF mailer had pictures?

I think they first advertised in the classifieds in the back of Popular Mechanics. Harbor Freight and Salvage. I think they started as liquidators of odd lots.

But the corporate culture changed drastically some 5 years ago. The son was running HF by then. He fired all Dad's friends and started new with a fresh crop of MBA types. I have twice observed Regional Managers visiting stores. Humorless, hurried, demanding. The stores are better now but it wouldn't be fun to work in the stores I'm familiar with.

 

[dragoneggs]

From Wikipedia... "Harbor Freight's first website went online in 1997.[11] It had a modest catalog of products, a brief "About Us" section and an order form for the printed catalog. There were also links to a customer service page with delivery times and return policies. In all, the original website had 10 landing pages. The current Harbor Freight Website[12] has over 78,000 indexed pages.[13] It had over 43 million unique visitors in 2012 according to compete.com from visitors mostly within the United States.[14] It sells over 7,000 different products online, most of which are sold in its retail stores."

 

[California]

Wayback Machine has this as their earliest copy of hf . com. Dated Oct 10, 1997.

Harbor Freight Tools

It's interesting to see there an aerial photo of HF's warehouse, large enough to have some dozen semitrailers backed up to docks. So they were already substantial by then.


Some things never change. A featured item in 1997:

Plant Homeopathy
Improve your houseplants up to 100%! Winterize your lawn for a greener spring! This miracle product .....

 

[DFB]

Your mimeographed HF mailer had pictures?

I think they first advertised in the classifieds in the back of Popular Mechanics. Harbor Freight and Salvage. I think they started as liquidators of odd lots.
QUOTE]


Yea your right a lot was just text description

 

[lostcreekranch]

They shipped everything from their big warehouse in Camarillo, Cali.

 

[sixdogs]

My son was looking through some 20+ year old Wood Magazines and noticed they had full page HF ads in them that long ago! What caught our eye was that there was no website listed, and there were several name brand tools listed (Dewalt, Stanley, Delta). All items in the add had free shipping too, even the Delta table saw.

While I have bought from them for what I believe to be decades, some of this is a little fuzzy but I recall that most of their items were name brand. Somewhere along the way, General Tool became synonymous with HF and it seemed everything was General Tool. It was quality stuff and was probably the start of HF trying to have a "branded" product without it really being branded. Everyone thought HF and General Tool were one and the same. Harbor Freight was known for quality, fair prices and free shipping. Then came China and the big slide to lower cost product, aggressive sales methods and the don't suck/everything sucks threads.

 

[IslandTractor]

While I have bought from them for what I believe to be decades, some of this is a little fuzzy but I recall that most of their items were name brand. Somewhere along the way, General Tool became synonymous with HF and it seemed everything was General Tool. It was quality stuff and was probably the start of HF trying to have a "branded" product without it really being branded. Everyone thought HF and General Tool were one and the same. Harbor Freight was known for quality, fair prices and free shipping. Then came China and the big slide to lower cost product, aggressive sales methods and the don't suck/everything sucks threads.

I've always assumed that most of the HF "branded" tools are just marketing gimmicks. Are there really "Pittsburgh", "Chicago Electric", "Central Pneumatic", "Predator", "US General", "Lynxx Outdoor Power", "Haulmaster", "Viking Batteries", "Cen-tech", "Badland Winches", "Central Machinery", "Pacific Hydrostar", "Thunderbolt Batteries", "Portland corded electric", "Earthquake" or "Drillmaster" products available from any other retailer than HF? Me thinks that the HF strategy has for many years simply been to find cheap Chinese manufacturers to knock off established tool designs, sometimes successfully (Earthquake, Predator) and often times not so well. Of course while we often blame "cheap Chinese manufacturers" for the lower quality tools at HF, in fact it is the American company, HF, that chooses the manufacturers and sets specifications not the other way around. Makita tools and many other top brands are also made in China after all.