Wal-Mart nails Popular Mechanics name for tools - license for the Popular Mechanics magazine label

Discount Store News, May 18, 1992

BENTONVILLE, Ark -- In another bid to expand its burgeoning private label program, Wal-Mart has licensed the Popular Mechanics name for a new private label hardware program.

The Popular Mechanics brand will cover hundreds of skus of hardware, including mechanics hand tools, tool boxes, vices, hammers, work belts and aprons, extension cords, nails, tacks, picture hangers, small electrical hardware such as switches and wall plates, and plumbing supplies such as toilet balances and faucet parts. At least for now, Wal-Mart won't market power tools or paint under its Popular Mechanics label.

Licensing the 90-year-old Popular Mechanics name for a private label brand replaces a short-lived Wal-Mart attempt to develop from scratch a private label line of hardware it called Promark.

Wal-Mart already is shipping Popular Mechanics hand tools, pliers, wrenches and screwdrivers, as supplies of the discontinued Promark brand of mechanics hand tools sell through at store level. Wal-Mart expects the new tool line to be on all stores' shelves by July or August. And it will take at least a year, and possibly two, to phase in that entire range of hardware products permitted under its Popular Mechanics licensing agreement. The chain has alerted store managers that Popular Mechanics products are coming soon.

As with the Promark brand, the Popular Mechanics brand of hand tools will offer a lifetime guarantee, much as Sears does with its Craftsman hand tools. No information is readily available about price levels for the Popular Mechanics had tools, but the Promark brand sells for about half the price of comparable Craftsman tools.

Wal-Mart declined to comment about its Popular Mechanics program.

The Popular Mechanics PL program joins two other private labels Wal-Mart has launched over the past two years, Equate, now offering about 52 skus of health and beauty care products, such as non-aspirin painkiller and Sam's American Choice, a line of 21 food products, including cola, cranberry drink and chocolate chip cookies it introduced last November.

In March 1991, Wal-Mart began carrying Popular Mechanics, the bible for a serious home, shop and auto repairman, at its checkouts. It discounts the magazine 15% to 20% from its newsstand price of $1.95. So far, Wal-Mart has made no decision about advertising its new Popular Mechanics line in the magazine, said an advertising source there, although it did advertise other products in the April issue.

The Popular Mechanics deal marks the second licensing agreement Wal-Mart has signed with a Hearst magazines. Some two years ago, the chain licensed the Sports Afield name for a line of about 1000 skus of sporting goods, such as camouflage hunting suits and boot socks.

In order to protect its image, Popular Mechanics is requiring Wal-Mart to submit for testing in its independent lab all products that will bear the Popular Mechanics name. Popular Mechanics already has tested hundreds of products, editor-in-chief Joe Oldham said.

It tested the handtools against Craftsmen and found them equal to or better, he said. It also tested other supplies, such as toilet actuator parts, and concluded that they performed properly for the intended use, even though no brand name parts were available for comparison.

Examples of products that will come in Popular Mechanics packaging are the 75 skus of electrical switches, plugs, outlets, and connectors from Leviton, Little Neck, N.Y. Wal-Mart already carries the line under the Leviton brand name.

Leviton will repackage the identical items, which will continue to carry just the Leviton brand name, in Popular Mechanics packages, said Karen Blumberg, a marketing specialist for the company.

The pricing hasn't changed, she said. and Leviton must start shipping by Aug. 1.

With a circulation of 1.64 million, Popular Mechanics boasts of the largest circulation of any men's service magazine in the home, shop and auto field, said David Graff, licensing director for Hearst magazines.

Founded in 1902, Popular Mechanics enjoys high name recognition, Graff said.

By licensing the name, Wal-Mart-Mart is "instantly acquiring a trademark that has believability and trust," he said.

In a recent Goldman Sachs research report, analyst George Strachan concluded that "Wal-Mart is increasingly breaking from a history of almost exclusive commitment to national-brand products, expanding and improving its private-label offerings, positioning them with greater clarity and consistency, and marketing them more aggressively than ever before."

The new Wal-Mart products are premium controlled products, Strachan noted, and its Equate products "are handily outselling their national-brand equivalent s in the stores."

Other Wal-Mart private label products include Ol' Roy dog foods, named after Sam Walton's favorite hunting dog, and Special Kitty cat foods.

Wal-Mart also offers American's Choice, a made in the U.S. recycled motor oil that sells for about 83 cents a quart; Fisherman's Choice fishing tackle, sourced from Korea, Japan and Taiwan; and Sportsman's Choice rain suits, ponchos and wadders, sourced from Thailand.