Hand tool preferences

Either you have strong feelings about your hand tools or you have a strong desire to win our $340 set of Wright Professional hand tools, because once again, this survey received a record number of responses. Whatever the reason, thank you for your replies.

So what is important to you in a hand tool? Why do you buy what you do, and from whom? To an extent, that depends on what you do and how directly connected you are to the tools you buy.

Wrench time = brand
The major sign of the amount of wrench time you put in is your brand preference. Among tool users who buy their own tools, 75 percent of survey respondents cite brand name as their primary purchasing factor.

By comparison, 48 percent of company purchasing agents use brand as a primary factor. Instead, 79.5 percent of purchasing agents base purchasing decisions on tool quality and warranties.

Maintenance managers, who outnumber purchasing agents three to one in this survey, feel even more strongly about quality: 85 percent use it as their number one buying factor.

Who you gonna call?
Users who buy their own tools not only trust their “brand,” they trust their distributor. A solid 86.7 percent of respondents who buy their own tools use local distributors as their primary tool source.

Among purchasing agents, this distributor trust still comes in first, but at a slightly softer 70 percent.

Maintenance managers don’t care quite so much about where tools come from — just 55 percent buy locally first.

Distributor influence
Another interesting relationship is between distributor preference and company size. Survey respondents who like to buy locally also tend to work for larger companies. Nearly 32 percent of workers who prefer local distribution work for companies with 100 or more tool users on site. These users also cite quality and warranty as their number one decision-making factor, followed by price, then brand.

Overall, 63 percent of survey respondents prefer local distributors. National distributor catalogs come in second, with 44 percent.

Why we buy
Our survey offered respondents nine factors to rank in terms of purchasing influence. In order, they are:
    1. Quality and Warranty 77.6 %
    2. (Tie) Safety and Price 52%
    3. Brand name 51%
    4. Design/ergonomics 46.9%
    5. Made in USB 45.9%
    6. Fast delivery 39.8%
    7. Features 38.5%
    8. Other 4%

Making the switch
Finally, when we asked the question what makes you switch brands, your answers made it clear; there really wasn’t any question. By a wide majority, 65 percent of you said the main reason you switch brands in your plant is because your needs have changed and you need different tools to do your work.

This article appeared in the June/July 2008 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright 2008.

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