Wolf - another famous British name sold off to a bunch of Chinese tat merchants
Wolf is now owned by the original director, under the new name of UK Home Shopping.
The
original director? I though that Wolf had originally been a family-owned concern based in North London who were sold of to/merged with Kango at Peterborough, which in turn became part of AEG/Atlas-Copco many years ago and who it was that finally killed the name off. So which original director is this? One of the Hanger Lane Wolf directors? And if they are a reputable manufacturer of high quality tools, there where is their R&D department these days? If Wolf returns to the market in the future with a range of tools clearly not cobbled together from Far East knock-offs, then maybe I and others will believe you. It's a big IF
Wolf was never owned by a company called Kango or AEG/ Atlas Copco. They originated in Ross On Wye and were based in Nottingham when eventually closed by the administrators, they were originally a family based affair but then one of the sons, a man called Mike Irwin (now director of UKHS) took control and ran it to the demise by cost cutting etc.
Unfortunately in this climate you can not charge makita money for makita quality tools without the name makita stuck to the side of it!
When they initially went bust in 2009 the stock and all of the spares were bought by a company called National Stock Solutions, Also trading as Ishop247, they have never been chinese owned!
Well by 2009 the name wasn't any longer part of Atlas-Copco or AEG, was it? Which presumably means that it had been bought by someone to slap onto third party products (aka cheap Chinese tat) which had neither the quality nor the design ethos of the original Wolf products - but where the intention was to try and use some of the brand value of the name (it's called "marketing", some of us call it "dishonesty"). Same has been done with a lot of other famous British marques and it is becoming the norm in certain areas of manufacturing. The firm may not have been Chinese and tat - the products (or at least the ones I've examined) WERE!
I am the Sales Manager for a well known tool manufacturer here in the UK, I'm not going to disclose though!
Well that limits it. There is one well known manufacturer in a northern town, let's not say where it is, who shut down their own manufacturing arm in the UK and became known for "touting" it's products around the cheapest supplier in China; resulting in some interesting quality issues highlighted on at least two other forums over recent years. Not your firm is it?
no, i know the firm you are talking about and its certainly not the one i work for!
We source almost all of our products from the far east, yes there are varying degrees of quality but arent there in any walk of life?
Yes. But with few exceptions Chinese stuff is still often made to standards far below those of the same products when they were being manufactured in the West. You only have to talk to, say, American
tradesmen about Milwaukee or Porter-Cable quality to see where that argument is going - down the SINK. If a product is cheap enough (and some of us are well aware of Chinese manufacturing costs) you can afford to take the hit of up to 6 or 8 times as many warranty claims you formerly stood because the margins are big enough to accommodate this degree of "hit" without impacting your profitability to such a major extent that your shareholders would start to complain
believe it or not the margins are no longer fantastic when importing from the far east, yes you expect to take a hit with warranty claims, and many of us have bought a container or 2 which havent turned out to be 100% as described resulting it being written off/ scrapped. However i stand by my original point, not everything made in china is rubbish and if you are a bit savvy about what you order you can source very well made products with profit to be made.
Few Facts:
Bosch
Makita
Dewalt
Ferm
Performance Power
Sealey
Worx
are all manufactured in the same factory in Guangzhou, China
A few counter comments:
The concept of third party manufacturing is not unknown in the West. Two names well known in that context were Timex and Scintilla who would and could make almost anything for anyone (and would, although the quality wasn't always great - Timex in Dundee used to manufacture for Sinclair and some of us are old enough to remember their quality issues). Scintilla is now in the Bosch group, but I still have Elu routers made by them in the 1980s. Having spent several years in the past working for a German tool manufacturer I am only too aware of the complicated relationships which existed at the time I was there between firms, which on the surface at least, were deadly rivals.
Ferm, Performance Power and Sealey are mainly generic products often with little intelligent design. In other words they are often just plain crude and often rather nasty. Worx is a low cost brand, too, with some design input, but there, too, there are question marks over quality. They are all made down to a price not up to a standard - and are true examples of you get what you pay for.
Performance power, Sealey and Draper are generic, yes, but nonetheless made on the same production lines as the more expensive products ( even if sealey are ridiculously overpriced!). I agree many products have flaws, recently i have had to recall a large quantity of a certain product because it was wired incorrectly (not dangerously i must add) resulting in our technicians adjusting over 2000 products in the UK, this is timely and expensive! However we were able to identify the issue long before too many customers were affected.
Bosch, Makita and Dewalt all have in-house design teams and spend large amounts of money on R&D. 3rd party manufacturing is done to reduce costs, but even these brands have their problems with Chinese and Far East production and I'm not alone in saying that my experience with trade tools is that overall quality and durability have diminished markedly over the last 20 years - not least because of large parts of manufacturing having gone to China
I agree with you entirely, but in line with quality reduction the price you now pay for a tool is significantly lower than that of say 20 years ago, this is because of a change in the marketplace and the user. No one suggests that you use a Wolf hammer drill for your business, they arent designed nor covered by warranty for professional use ( although this is a difficult one to prove)
the bottom line is you get what you pay for, if you see two generators one for £65 and one for £95 yet look alike, dont expect the former to have copper windings!
A lot of the facts you are being told in these forums are incorrect, if you want to be told straight call the companies direct, there are far too many keyboard warriors and armchair experts on here.
Like you, you mean?
That particular insult cuts both ways, you know. Call almost any company about the reliability of their products and they'll very rarely tell you the truth, especially if they have problems. If you work who I think you do then you are just as bad as others in that respect - far too much driven by shareholders needs. Far too many firms are marketing a "brand name" of quality and delivering poor quality tat - they're hardly likely to admit to it, now are they?
Any reputable company would explain the limitations of the tool, its in their best interest, returned products are costly.
BTW a lot of "incorrect" opinions in these forums by tradesmen are the result of hard earned experience (often bad) at the hands of firms such as yours. People who have to pay out hard earned cash fpor the tools by which they earn a living. But, of course, as a maketeer you're hardly going to want to take the rough with the smooth. Instead of trying to "rubbish" those of us who contribute why not seek out our experience? Or maybe that's too much like having to work at producing a quality product?
I'm certainly not slating anyone who has used tools and had bad experiences, but there is a lot of incorrect information and hear- say on here!
I'm all for people airing their views over poor quality tools but paying £25.99 for a cordless drill and expecting it to last like a high quality one when used by Bob the Builder for 18 months is unrealistic, if we only manufactured tools for tradesmen then DIY would be a thing of the past, companies have to tailor their goods and prices to suit the market, just look at how fierce the pricing is on ebay alone!.
Hi Steve, hang around a bit I love your insider knowledge.
Yes,"Steve", team up with our resident "expert". I'm sure you'll make a great team
