Store brands saw away at nat'l hardware labels - discount store private label merchandise competes with national brands

Discount Store News, Oct 4, 1993

With private label hardware brands coming on strong at Wal-Mart and Kmart, it comes as no surprise that their new brands popped high onto the Top Brands list for 1993.

The emergence of Popular Mechanics at Wal-Mart and BenchTop at Kmart helps explain the slowdown in national brand additions in hardware and deceased strength of Black & Decker and Stanley, even though they remain No. 1 and No. 2 on the Top 10 list.

In this year's Top Brands survey, only 6% of discount store managers surveyed said their chains had increased the number of national hardware brands carried, compared to 9% who said that over the past three years and 14% who responded that way in 1989.

The percentage of managers citing national hardware brand increases varied widely, however, by chain and region. Of Kmart managers, 13% said they had increased national brands over the past year, compared to 3% of Wal-Mart managers. In the Northeast, 11% of managers said they had increased hardware brands vs. 2% of those in the South and 4% in the West.

On average, store managers cited 2.5 hardware brands as top performers, right on a par with the 2.5 average for all departments, but down from 3.0 brands in last year's survey.

Hardware ranks relatively high on managers' lists of categories in which they feel they have the most influence, seventh of 25 merchandise categories. However, their influence is rather small. Fewer than one in 10 managers said they have influence over the hardware department compared with 35% for the top category, food, candy & snacks.

The percentage citing control over hardware varied from 10% of Kmart managers to 4% at Target, where hardware is related to just a basic, convenience selection.

Rose's is another chain that has pared down offerings to hardware department basics--only white paint, for example--illustrating the lack of influence other conventional discount store managers play in the department against corporate direction.

The development of private label hardware at Kmart and Wal-Mart has come at the expanse of Black & Decker and Stanley. They again came in first and second on the Top 10 rankings--but by smaller margins than last year.

In the 1993 survey, two-thirds of surveyed managers mentioned B&D as their top performing brand, down from three-fourths in 1992. This year, 64% of managers named Stanley a top performer, down from 74% last year.

General Electric garnered 11% of the top brand mentions, down slightly from 13% in 1992. [TABULAR DATA OMITTED]

But BenchTop muscled onto the Top 10 list with one in 10 manager mentions, all, of course, from Kmart managers. The same ratio of manager mentions was recorded by Wal-Mart managers for its private label, Popular Mechanics, up from 1% of mentions a year ago.