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Shown above is Home Depot’s 2020 winter holiday shopping season “gift center,” featuring top cordless power tool brands such as Dewalt, Milwaukee Tool, and Ryobi.
I’ve been visiting my local Home Depot stores to scout out their Spring and Father’s Day 2021 tool deals, and once again I left with a sense of “I’d buy that!” over so many things. I’m also annoyed – this gives me so much more work to do.
This is usually a good measure of a retailer’s tool deals – how much I groan about the work involved with writing things up.
(Home Depot is currently a ToolGuyd sponsor, but this post is outside that scope.)
I would say that Home Depot’s various tool deals fall into either of two categories: predictable special buys, and WOW that’s a great deal!!
For example, they currently have a Milwaukee Fastback utility knife 2-pack special buy right now where you can get well more than your money’s worth for $15 with free shipping. Although the Fastback knife deals change from time to time, I would consider this a somewhat predictable promo.
Skip the Fastback deal, and another one will pop up, either around the winter holidays or perhaps sooner.
And then there’s Milwaukee’s Father’s Day 2021 hand tool deals:
Buy 3 of these basic every-use hand tools, get 1 free (or 25% off your total). That’s more of a Wow that’s a great deal! promo. This is the first time I can recall seeing a Milwaukee Tool deal like this, and we might not see something like this again.
I was at the local Home Depot to pick up something in a hurry and found myself doing double-takes at the Milwaukee M12 and M18 cordless power tool deals.
Some of Home Depot’s deals are discounts, bundles, or special buys centered around products you typically don’t see on sale, such as the new Milwaukee M18 Fuel Packout vacuum. They also had promos on the Milwaukee M12 Surge kit, M18 Fuel stubby impact wrench, and different “buy this, get that” types of cordless power tool offers.
With yesterday’s visit, I couldn’t leave without picking up the Dewalt Atomic laser distance measurer or stud finder to try out. Granted I was shopping for ToolGuyd purposes, but I try to follow my intuition with such purchases. If I find a deal to be very compelling, some of you might feel the same, and so picking up a review sample on impulse is usually worth it.
I remember when Sears had the biggest and best holiday shopping season display. They had promos on the broadest selection of tools, and they always introduced new brands each holiday season. But, they seemingly stopped caring about anything and all aspects of the store fell apart.
Lowe’s has been trying new things, and I feel that things are a little different now compared to what I’ve seen in recent years, but their promos aren’t as vast or compelling. They had a better showing last winter holiday season, and I hope they continue to improve.
What about Walmart and their Hart Tools? From the start, Walmart and Hart said they’re not really focused on promos.
Amazon just announced Prime Day 2021, which will take place on 6/21 and 6/22. What can we look forward to here with respect to tool deals? Their Prime Day 2020 was decent, but they don’t seem to be putting much effort into things anymore. Most of their promos these days are on no-name brands that pay for the visibility and placements.
At Home Depot, some of their seasonal deals are predictable repeats, but there are always enough new promos to keep things interesting.
I know there are a lot of “eh, they’ve got nothing I need” sentiments about Home Depot’s seasonal deals, and I usually feel the same outside of promos on core tools and consumables. But if viewing Home Depot’s promos through the ideas of someone looking to start or expand a tool kit, well, HD cannot be easily beat.
As mentioned, I always end up with strong “I’d buy that” sentiments, and you can also gauge this by how many of the deals and promos I end up posting about.
If I were starting from scratch and needed to build up a cordless tool kit, I think that Home Depot would stretch my dollar the furthest.
Shop Home Depot Father’s Day Tool Deals
I tend to spend a lot of time sorting through my observations about tool retailer trends, changes, and patterns, but I’m also limited to the retailers I can visit. Are there any retailers you’d say offer better or more compelling tool deals?
Also, here’s an interesting question I ponder at times – what would I do differently?
How about a special Home Depot-exclusive Leatherman multi-tool? A special edition Husky-branded Maglite flashlight?
