Exclusive: Crescent — Much more than a wrench
Synonymous with adjustable wrenches, Crescent has quietly grown into a brand of category-defining tools.
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| With the Crescent wrench front and center as an icon in the wrench category, the Crescent brand has quietly grown into one of the most respected and diverse brands for professional hand tools in the world. Over the past two years, Crescent has become the umbrella brand for five other legendary, category-defining brands and their tools. Those brands are Lufkin (measuring), Wiss (scissors, snips and cutting tools), H.K. Porter (heavy-duty cutting tools), Nicholson (files) and JOBOX (tool and equipment storage). Each of these carries extensive clout in its respective category, and now they all carry the Crescent name. |
There isn’t a single person reading this who doesn’t have an adjustable wrench in their toolbox. And it’s safe to say that most — if not all — of you have called it a Crescent wrench at least once.
But Brendan Walsh wants to make this clear: “It’s not a Crescent unless it says Crescent on it. If it doesn’t, it’s just an adjustable wrench, and, yeah, there’s a big difference.”
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| Brendan Walsh |
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| Kevin Fitzpatrick |
As director of product marketing for Crescent Tools, Walsh takes this distinction personally. The adjustable wrench is one of the all-time classic tools, up there with hammers, screwdrivers, tape measures and saws. All of them are immediately recognizable. All recognized as essential. But only one of them is commonly referred to by the brand that popularized it — and that’s the Crescent wrench.
This happens when brands become synonymous with the thing that they sell. The most popular examples are brands like Kleenex, Band-Aid, Xerox, Jet Ski and even Zamboni — brands that are referenced interchangeably as names for the items they sell. Kleenex sells facial tissues, but everyday consumers have come to refer to all tissues as Kleenex, whether it’s made by them or not.
And that’s what happened to Crescent’s adjustable wrench.
“I get why people do it,” Walsh said. “I mean, Crescent wrench is a lot easier to say than adjustable wrench. By now, it’s been happening since 1907 so that’s more than a century of people calling it a Crescent wrench. The standard was set way back then and it’s still that way. Meanwhile, the Crescent brand has become one of the most diverse hand-tool brands on the market, and the average tool user is still focused on the wrench.”
The misconception starts with the fact that many people don’t realize that Crescent is the name of a brand, not the tool. While adjustable spanners have been around since the 1840s, the Crescent Tool Company (now simply Crescent Tools) patented its famed adjustable wrench in 1908 at its humble home in Jamestown, NY. It quickly became the largest manufacturer of adjustable wrenches in America, saturating the market with the popular tool and its memorable name.
With the Crescent wrench front and center as an icon in the wrench category, the Crescent brand has quietly grown into one of the most respected and diverse brands for professional hand tools in the world. Over the past two years, Crescent has become the umbrella brand for five other legendary, category-defining brands and their tools. Those brands are Lufkin (measuring), Wiss (scissors, snips and cutting tools), H.K. Porter (heavy-duty cutting tools), Nicholson (files) and JOBOX (tool and equipment storage). Each of these carries extensive clout in its respective category, and now they all carry the Crescent name.
The architects of Crescent’s new structure wanted to add brands that embodied the same principles that Crescent has always stood for — sharing a legacy of being trusted by those who rely on tools to make a living. The six brands combined possess more than 700 years of experience providing trustworthy tools to professionals of all levels.
“We make so many more tools than the average person, even a heavy tool user, knows about,” said Kevin Fitzpatrick, product manager at Crescent Tools. “We’re still associated with our adjustable wrenches, and for good reason, but we’re a whole lot more than that now.”
It’s weird to think that Crescent is building a name for itself when it’s already so recognizable, but it’s true. The goal now is to shift people’s perception of that name toward the broad-reaching brand catalog that it’s become. Crescent’s catalog boasts more than 2,600 unique products, with new releases coming every year. Fitzpatrick credits the company’s insistence on using VOC (voice of customer) to develop innovative advancements to storied products, just like they did with the Shockforce tape measure.
“We’re producing innovative products now the same way we did a hundred years ago by listening to tradesmen to develop and improve tools in ways that make their lives easier,” Fitzpatrick said. “For example, we launched our Crescent Lufkin Shockforce measuring tapes this past March, and the reaction over how innovative they are has been overwhelming. Tradesmen didn’t know that tapes could be improved so much, but we’re doing it and we’re doing it with their help.”
“Maybe someday they’ll just be called Crescent tapes,” he said, laughing. “I mean, I wouldn’t be mad about it.”
It’s not likely that people will stop calling adjustable wrenches “Crescent wrenches” anytime soon. Both Walsh and Fitzpatrick are (almost) OK with that. As long as tool users understand that the brand does make a difference — and that the same brand that fashioned one of the most iconic tools out there is still innovating all these years later. CS
Learn more at www.crescenttool.com.
CONTRACTOR SUPPLY MAGAZINE
The October/November 2024 of Contractor Supply magazine is here!
Our cover story, A Rewarding Passion - Dale Hahs II, third-generation of Denver's AIS Industrial & Construction Supply, is STAFDA's incoming 2025 president.
A Special STAFDA section featuring a welcome address, an agenda, session previewss by presenters and much more. Also in this issue are our Industry Updates on: Lifting, Moving and Material Handling; Lasers, Levels and Measurement; Hand Tools; Cordless Power Tools; Drill Bits and Cutting Tools; and Toolboxes, Bags and Belts.
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