Why no equivalent of harbor freight in the UK. (2024)

Went into a Harbour Freight while in the US a couple of months ago,
Yeah theres a big selection of tools there, most of the hand tools are very poor quality similar to a local market stall,
they carry a fairly large selection of fabrication tools depending on the shop size, all chinese,
i nearly brought back one their dual shrinker/stretcher tools for about $140 ish but it was at the end of my trip and i was already way overweight and already into a second case with my previous overspending

I have a friend who lives in the US - he agrees that most of Harbor Freight's tools are cheap Chinese ones, which are fantastic when it's for an odd job that you're not likely to do very often. However, he was a bit cunning and managed to find the same tools on the various Chinese online shops (eg AliExpress), for even less money. Shipping is generally negligible from China too, although it can take a couple of weeks. OK so you can't inspect the tool before you buy it. It might be worth seeing if you can find the tool you want online in China and cut out the middle man that we don't even have in the UK.

mainly because they serve a way bigger market. More people and they still have that " I can do that" attitude. oh also the averge American is a great big punter for buying stuff they don't even need LOL

I was an ocassional visitor to Michigan during the 90s and I always had a look in Sears when I was there as there were fair sized DIY/tool departments in the bigger stores.
Could never bring anything heavy home but usually brought back things like wood router bits, which were $ for £, so about half-price back then.
Sears didn't use to do any mail-order outside of mainland USA those days, which I thought was a pity. Now I see that they have started a mail-order service but the range of tools is nothing like what it was.
I imagine that they're feeling the pinch in the US economy and concentrating on pink things for ladies that have high profit margins.