Walk into the tool aisles of any major retailer and you'll be greeted by colorful rows of products that are sold under a variety of different names, each one seemingly distinct at first glance. Some products are exclusive to certain retailers — take, for example, Ryobi's exclusive affiliation with Home Depot, or the Kobalt tool brand, which can only be found at Lowe's. The reason for the latter is quite simple: Lowe's owns the Kobalt brand name and has done so since the brand was first launched in 1998.
Initially, Lowe's partnered with J.H. Williams to offer a selection of mechanics' tools, but the brand's lineup swelled over time to include a range of other segments and products.
Today, Kobalt's tools are not manufactured by J.H. Williams, but instead are contracted out to Chervon, a Chinese toolmaking company that owns a number of familiar brands. Alongside its Kobalt line of tools, Chervon also manufactures tools under the Skil brand, which it acquired in 2017, and Flex, which it acquired in 2013. The EGO brand is also owned by Chervon, having been introduced as a new brand by the company just over a decade ago.
In its relatively short time on sale, the EGO brand has built up a solid reputation for making good tools. From its inception, EGO has been positioned primarily as a cordless battery tool brand, while Kobalt offers a much wider range of products aside from tools, from workbenches to generators.
Read more: Every Major Cordless Impact Wrench Brand Ranked Worst To Best
The History Of Chervon
While most frequent tool buyers will be well aware of both the Kobalt and EGO brands, it's safe to assume that most won't have heard of Chervon. The company was first founded in the city of Nanjing in eastern China in 1994, and built its first wholly-owned tool manufacturing facility in 1999. In 2007, Chervon inked a deal to become a contract supplier for Bosch, and six years later, it bought the historic Flex power tool brand. Flex operates semi-independently from the rest of Chervon and has its own manufacturing base in Germany, but all of Chervon's other products are made in one of two facilities.
The first facility, Chervon Industrial Park, has been in operation since 2006. Its second facility, Green Power Industrial Park, was opened in 2015. Chervon significantly expanded the Green Power facility in 2023, giving it the capacity to build an additional 12 million power tools per year. For now, that means that both EGO and Kobalt's tools are made in the same factories in China. The company is also in the process of building a new facility in Vietnam, but at the time of writing, no details have been released about when the facility will open or which tools might be built there when it does.
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Read the original article on SlashGear.
