"John Grossbohlin" writes:

For me personally, their product mix didn't offer much of interest for a
walk in store--Woodworkers Warehouse was far more interesting. ;~)


Well, I was at both stores, and the Woodcraft store was 100 times
better than WoodWorker's Warehouse. I spend a lot of time and money at
Woodcraft, and every time I pass the empty store I get an empty
feeling in my gut.

Although - I was getting annoyed at some of Woodcraft's practices:

They would give you a 10% off coupon (on your birthday) but
you couldn't combine that with any other sale they offered. I
tried to mazimize my purchase value, but the best I could do
was get 10%.

They would have a sale each month, but often the retail price
of the sale item was raised right before the sale, so the
savings was imaginary. I shopped around a lot, and often the
Woodcraft sale price was higher than the normal price at
another store.

Some of the sale items were great, but they started importing
new items for the sole purpose of offering an item at a low
cost. Some of those items were equal to (or lower than) the
quality that Harbor Freight.


The owner's cited being required to stock large quantities of slow moving
merchandise, carving chisels and hardware in particular, and that tied up
their cash. Another problem was that the slick, high profile location was
expensive. They bled cash until they couldn't bleed any more...

In this Albany/Schenectady/Troy area there are a lot of places when
the rental property owners think they have a goldmine. I've seen
entire strip malls remain empty for years because they insist on high
rental prices, and small stores that try to survive keep failing.

I didn't know about those requirements for keeping carving chisels
etc. displayed. But that helps explain the problem. I always wondered
about the huge displays, and all that wasted space.

It's a shame that Woodcraft was so restrictive in their policies.

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