10 Year Analysis of Brands that Last in Home Improvement

The home improve­ment indus­try has expe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant change with­in the last 10 years, impact­ing retail­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers, as well as the con­sumers buy­ing their prod­ucts. Shifts in how con­sumers shop, pur­chase, and acquire home improve­ment prod­ucts lead orga­ni­za­tions to con­tin­u­ous­ly adapt their busi­ness mod­els to meet mar­ket demand. While many of these changes were imple­ment­ed to improve oper­a­tions, there were oth­ers – like find­ing new sources to cor­rect sup­ply chain issues that left con­sumers frus­trat­ed and ques­tion­ing their loyalty.

As sup­ply-chain prob­lems begin to ease and shop­ping for home improve­ment prod­ucts becomes increas­ing­ly more con­ve­nient with buy­ing online and pick­ing up in-store or curb­side, what impact has this had on brand loy­al­ty? Specif­i­cal­ly, which brands have been on top the longest? 

TraQ­line con­duct­ed a brand analy­sis of 225 home improve­ment prod­ucts, tracked over the last ten years, to deter­mine which brands main­tained a lead­ing mar­ket share posi­tion in the face of indus­try changes. Five icon­ic brands rose to the top: Crafts­man, Stan­ley, Black & Deck­er, Dewalt, and Gen­er­al Elec­tric. See below for addi­tion­al key insights about each of these top brand win­ners below.

Brand That Last In Home Improvement

#1 — Craftsman

Out­per­form­ing all oth­ers was Crafts­man. Across all 225 cat­e­gories, Crafts­man earned top brand over 200 times in the last ten years. 

• Crafts­man held near­ly twice as many num­ber one brand spots as the next clos­est brand.
• Giv­en the vari­ety of tools man­u­fac­tured for the home improve­ment indus­try by Crafts­man, it comes as no sur­prise that the brand was num­ber one at least once for 32 of the 225 ana­lyzed prod­uct categories.
• Crafts­man was con­sec­u­tive­ly the num­ber one brand for 14 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts across all ten years (that comes out to 6% of the cat­e­gories tracked!). Key prod­ucts include air com­pres­sors, mechan­ics tool set, pli­ers (both indi­vid­ual and set), screw­drivers, wrench­es, tool bag, tool­box, tool cab­i­net, and tool chest.
• For six addi­tion­al prod­ucts, Crafts­man was the num­ber one brand between 6 and 8 of the ten years analyzed.

#2 — Stanley

Stan­ley was the run­ner up for brands that last with 111 occur­rences as top brand winner.

• Stan­ley held the num­ber one brand posi­tion for ten con­sec­u­tive years across nine dif­fer­ent prod­ucts includ­ing: chis­el, hand saws, lev­els, mea­sur­ing tapes, and util­i­ty knives.
• Stan­ley was num­ber one at least once across 13 dif­fer­ent products.

#3 — Black & Decker

Black & Deck­er had 108 occur­rences for the num­ber one brand spot. 

• Black & Deck­er was the num­ber one brand for ten con­sec­u­tive years across five key prod­ucts: cord­less shears, hedge & line trim­mers, jig/​sabre saw, portable belt sander, pow­er edger, and leaf blower.
• Black & Deck­er was num­ber one at least once across 14 dif­fer­ent products.

#4 — Dewalt

Dewalt came in fourth place among the con­tenders for brands that last with 96 occasions.

• Dewalt was the num­ber one brand for ten con­sec­u­tive years across six prod­ucts: cir­cu­lar saw blade, drill bit, screw­driv­er bit, impact dri­ver, pow­er miter saw, and rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing saws.
• Dewalt was num­ber one at least once across 23 products.

#5 — General Electric

Appli­ances are a key prod­uct cat­e­go­ry with­in the home improve­ment indus­try. Gen­er­al Elec­tric (GE) was our fifth strongest brand over­all in terms of fre­quen­cy with a total of 78 num­ber one instances. 

• GE was the top brand for ten con­sec­u­tive years across 6 prod­ucts includ­ing cook­ing prod­ucts, room ACs, freez­ers, & dehumidifiers.

There are many fac­tors that go into why brands main­tain con­sumer loy­al­ty and share. From brands and stores con­sid­ered to pur­chase dri­vers, TraQ­line Durable IQ tracks mar­ket insights that shed light on these fac­tors — for these five top brands and hun­dreds more.

If you would like more infor­ma­tion on the brand loy­al­ty insights avail­able through Durable IQ, vis­it our site or send us a note at info@​traqline.​com. Fur­ther­more, our team will be at the HIRI 2023 Insights Sum­mit lat­er this year, and would love to dis­cuss these insights and more.