Stanley Black & Decker Wants To Buy Craftsman Line From Sears

Sears may sell its Craftsman line of tools to tool giant Stanley Black & Decker, according to a Bloomberg report.

Sears announced in May that it planned to explore options on its popular and well-known Craftsman, Kenmore and DieHard brands, and there definitely appears to be interest in the Craftsman line.

In addition to Black & Decker, other interested suitors in the brand are Hong Kong’s Techtronic Industries Co., U.S.-based Apex Tool Group and Sweden’s Husqvarna AB.

The interest in Craftsman “does speak to the fact that this is a venerable brand,” Allison Ames, chief executive officer at Beanstalk, a brand consulting firm, told Bloomberg. “There are not that many brands with the heritage and trust of a Craftsman in the home improvement space … Sears just was not in a position to properly invest in it. A company that is in the space can do a lot more with it.”

Stanley Black & Decker, based in New Britain, Connecticut, was founded in 1843 and bills itself as the world’s largest tools and storage company. The company currently employees about 52,000 people in over 50 countries.

Final bids for the Craftsman line are due by the end of October, and the company is expected to fetch about $2 billion in a sale.

If Sears were to get $2 billion for Craftsman, it “would be a win and a loss for the company,” according to Noel Hebert, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.