***One word : WALMART.***
I have an old photo of a town on the high plains we used to live in. There is a small JC Penny store there.
I have been through that town many times and there is no Pennys store there anymore. It closed up way before Sam Walton ever bought the bankrupt Ben Franklin stores.
Today that town is almost a ghost town and the nearest Walmart is 100 miles away.
As for the Craftsman tools, they used to be made not far from here. Now in China.
K-Mart and ACE hardware now carry CRAFTSMAN tools.
A problem is Sears bought up lots of cheap goods and tried to pass them off on the public.
Their self propelled lawnmower was a joke and broke the first day.
Battery jumper cables had the clamps made of plastic and the one on display at the store had a shattered clamp on it.
The welding machine had a plastic adjusting knob and it was shattered, in the store.
Their binoculars were junk.
Sears began the journey downward back in the 1970s.
My daughter gave me a Craftsman tool chest on wheels as a present. Pure crap. Thin sheet metal, bad welds, no drawer liners, cheap wheels, no drawer sliders. Didn't want to hurt my daughter's feelings so "happily" accepted it. But I kept my off-brand much better old tool chest, that cost much less than what she paid, and relegated the new one to a tool shed to store other stuff. Both Sears and Penney's are selling crap.