Greg Postma wrote:
Today, I was sitting around with a couple of my clients and our
conversation turned to tools and hardware items. We talked about the big
box stores and the local hardware store and the specialty tool
retailers. And then one of them said "We have all these places to spend
money on our toys, I wonder where the rest of the world buys their
tools? That got me to thinking, where do you buy your tools?

Here in the states we have HD,Lowes,Ace,Sears,TruValue,HF and the
serious places Graingers, Enco, J&L and the Farm and FLeets, but in the
UK andEurope, Asia, Oz and NZ, Africa, So. America, and even Canada
where do you guys get your tools and hardware items? DO you folks have
the same big box stores or do you buy from local merchants?

I know that I usually expose my ignorance when I post to this group, and
having never been outside the US except for a brief trip to CA, I am
showing the world what a babe in woods I really amG.

I'm in Chicago. When I need a real tool I order it over the internet. Sometimes a local smaller supply place will carry quality tools. You won't find a decent selection of non-imported (aka junk) tools at a home depot.

I was in Poland lasy year, and they have this chain store called Castorama, which is sort of like a home depot. The majority of tools were junk, but there were a few decent tools from Knipex and so forth. There were some American made power tools as well.

The hardware stores that had the best selection of nearly anything were the small shops which are pretty much all gone now, or charge so much money it's hard to justify using them in the first place. The home depot near me has a poor selection of sandpaper and doesn't even sell TSP anymore. The dowel rods are from China. The rebar wire is from China. I'm suprised they even take US dollars at the checkout line anymore.