Who Makes Ridgid Tools? | Hacker News Reader

Who Makes Ridgid Tools?

housegrail.com

31 pointsstacktrust44 comments

What a mess. Was it just a historical accident that for a few decades in the 20th century, brands really meant something?

There have been a few waves of overdoing mergers.

The more you allow companies to acquire other companies and sometimes just trademarks, the more you dilute the meaning of brands. In particular the pattern is to build a high quality brand and then sell it to someone who will suck every penny of that built up goodwill by gradually reducing quality taking advantage of the perception of quality until it’s all gone. Sometimes this is actually forced by fiduciary duty.

> Sometimes this is actually forced by fiduciary duty.

No, it’s never forced. That’s a meme.

Please prove me wrong with more than the word “meme”.

Literally every time any large company invests in the future rather than selling off all of its assets. (See apple with the M1 chips, etc)

If you think that is true, show the the thousands of lawsuits that would be happening literally every day because stuff isn’t short term cost optimized.

"that's a meme" is no stronger.

Of course it is. Random people repeating it is literally the only evidence of it.

> Sometimes this is actually forced by fiduciary duty.

There’s no way that “run the company into the ground” is fulfilling a fiduciary duty.

Please stop repeating this tired meme.

The fiduciary duty is to sell at a price when offered, whether or not the buyers are hatchet men.

That’s insane. If I offer you $5.00 for your company are you obligated to sell? No, of course not.

This guy (bear?) does a good job explaining who makes what and what is really what.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhrzmkSVNh4

I've been around the internet long enough to spot poorly researched, ghost written "content" and this is bottom tier.

It’s an affiliate link farm. Says so right at the top of the page. They’re at least honest about it.

I agree in one respect because this content was not written in July of 2022 because I distinctly remember reading it quite awhile ago. But I’m not sure what the issue is with the actual content—do you know the information to be inaccurate in some way?

Source always matters.

If something sounds like it might possibly be true, and important enough to matter, but comes from a source that is either unproven or proven unreliable, then it's reasonable to either ignore it o matter what it says, or look into the topic elsewhere until you have found multiple reliable sources, and it doesn't matter if in the end the data happens to be the same.

The initial data, accurate or not, was utterly valueless random data. Random includes everything, both true and untrue and everything in between. The true bits have no value because you don't know they're true until after you determined it some other way.

When a source repeatedly turns out to only deliver info that later checks out, THEN you can start granting it some amount of benefit of the doubt. Not before, and not at all when a source is not only unproven but already has a haphazard history.

Source always matters, period.

Could you please recommend a better link on this specific topic?

What is the specific topic though? What’s important here? Most tool brands operate this way, Ridgid is not unique in any way.

FWIW, the Wikipedia article about Ridgid includes more information and is also much more concise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridgid

Here is a graphic with a bunch of power tool brands and who owns them.

https://cdn.protoolreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/po...

Also I would like to note that anything from Stanley Black & Decker after the merger is of low quality compared to other brands, in my experience. With the possible exception of Mac.

I had a friend who worked at Stanley Tools as a mechanical engineer after college. What they said about how tools were wholly sourced from random factories with no design or engineering done by Stanley was one of the first things that made me realize brands mean nothing.

Infographic is missing Hitachi. I assume they are on their own then?

They merged with Metabo. Or maybe bought them. Can't remember which.

Hitachi tools are now Metabo HPT since Hitachi sold off that division. Snap-On might be the last true independent.

That's only in North America, in EU/Asia they're Hikoki. And in EU there is still Metabo.

Tool brands don't mean much anymore. Cheap and expensive tools are made on the same production line. I bought a set of GearWrench ratcheting spanners a few years ago and got a 16mm "Husky" spanner in the middle of the set.

When you branch out you can see some quality differences, especially in tolerances, heat treatment, hardness, etc.

The most expensive brands (snap on, etc) aren't always best, but the cheap stuff is almost always not very good. Some clear correlations by country too, good stuff coming out of Taiwan, Germany, Japan and still some from the US.

GearWrench makes tools for several brands, Kobalt (Lowe's house brand) included.

There are a few like makita, festool and Bosch that are still independently owned, but yes very much diluted

So wait: Rigid, Milwaukee, and Ryobi are all manufactured by the same company (TTi?)? I had no idea Is there any actual difference here or is it all marketing?

There are the only 3 brands in power tools I recall seeing, so this is very odd.

There are a handful.

https://www.protoolreviews.com/power-tool-manufacturers-who-...

I think I’ve seen a better source in the past.

I think it would be great if using trademarks as standalone labels were prohibited, and a company had to label everything it produced with its own name. So there would be (Stanley/Dewalt, Stanley/Bostich, Stanley/BlackAndDecker) making it apparent they were all made by the same company, rather than letting a handful of companies confuse the market by creating a simulation of competition.

Also battery compatibility. What cordless tool manufacturers have done creating incompatible battery connectors should be flat out illegal. There is absolutely no reason for it besides undermining the market by creating artificial lock in monopolies.

> Stanley/Dewalt, Stanley/Bostich, Stanley/BlackAndDecker

Stanley and Black and Decker have merged, they're called Stanley Black and Decker now.

My understanding is Milwaukee is still engineered in the States. Their FUEL line (brushless, high end) is very well respected for most tools.

You need to look harder - dewalt, makita, hitachi, Bosch in the common middle to pro end, skil, porter cable, black and decker on the low end and that’s just for super common ones. Hilti, festool, Mitabo on the more expensive end. Not to mention the HF and Walmart brands, Crafstman, etc. This is off the cuff, but seriously this is a one second Google search.

And yes there is a big difference between ryobi and Milwaukee - it’s classic market segmentation. Ryobi is for hobbyist home light duty shit and competes with B&D, Skil, etc. Milwaukee is made for tradespeople - higher performance motors and parts. They are more expensive - and despite the contingent of tech bros on here thinking they’re the only smart people in existence - people are not paying that premium for no reason or “marketing”.

Except for the new hitachi made rebranded metabo miter saws

Minor nitpick, there is no longer a line of Hitachi power tools. After the merger they're now called Metabo HPT.

Another nitpick, they're Metabo HPT only in North America, in EU and Asia they're Hikoki. So at the end there is still separate Metabo, and there is also Metabo HPT/Hikoki. That's a very strange limbo since it'll be very hard to look for reviews.

If you look at the lower end brands, they're often all selling near-identical licensed products regardless of parent company. The higher end brands are usually actually different from each other.

And AEG at least. Probably more.

I often wonder about these websites. You run into from time to time, full of pages with something that could be summarized in one sentence drawn out to several paragraphs, with plenty of links to pages full of affiliate links.

Is there somewhere selling a "affiliate link WordPress SEO optimized site in a box" somewhere that you can use to pump these out and promises you can make a few bucks just by clicking "Go!"?

Always just saw their power tools as 'better' ryobi stuff. But with Ryobi's draw being cheapness, battery compatibility and unique tools.

However they're the defacto when it comes to pipe. Real quality heavy rigid stuff.

IIRC RIGID batteries are guaranteed, e.g. come into HD and swap the failed battery for a new one. AFAIK no one else offers that. If that’s still true, I’d make different decisions than I did previously.

I believe it was the engineering school of the University of Waterloo that had (still has?) a giant pipe wrench called the Rigid Tool as their mascot.

Yep, a _chromed_ pipe wrench. "The Tool".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com