When it’s time to buy new tools, most of you have done your research. At least, that’s
what the studies show. You’re considering what you intend to buy, and analyzing how
current products may fit your needs.
Less formal studies indicate that many tool purchases
are impulse buys. You get on the tool truck, see and touch the new stuff, and bingo! It’s
yours.
Personally, I think that at least 95 percent of tool buys are researched, whether
actively or subliminally. Why do I think that?
Because you don’t just shut down when
you turn out the lights on the repair bay at night. You take continuing education courses
to stay current on upcoming technologies, improved procedures and new tools. You attend conferences
and technical seminars. You read magazines like PTEN. Tools and equipment are in your head
day and night.
In the process of reading PTEN, whether actively reading every new product
listing and advertisement or just leafing through, you are learning more, on every page,
about tools.
That’s why what happens on the tool truck (“How did I end up buying
that drill?”)
isn’t really an impulse buy. It’s actually the culmination of research that you’ve
been doing, even if you didn’t know you were doing it.
We’ve stuffed this issue
with more than 20 pages of tool manufacturer listings, so the information will be there for
you when you need it. Sooner or later, planned or unplanned, it will turn out to be research
in the end.
Brendan Dooley
Editor
[email protected]
