I worked at a TSC in high school, and its really simple actually. Their "cared for" segment of customers are the homeowners who stop in for dog food, then impulse buy a
JD tee shirt and get talked into buying some short-life AA batteries or a garbage-bag thickness poly tarp when they make it to checkout. The type who buy a new riding
mower every 3-5 years, even better if they can be talked into opening up the stores credit card when they do, which is also why there is little/no parts support for anything
mechanical they sell. These folks dont know enough to buy something better, if they did they'd likely break it/never maintain it/etc then just need another new one. This is
where the money is.
This is why most of the store caters to such demographics. This is also why there is very little worthwhile there beyond their surprisingly good selection of nuts/bolts.
I'll be honest. No one cares about you guys at that company. Actual tradesmen/farmers/etc are maybe 1 in 5 or 6 customers I had there, at absolute most.
All they're interested in is cheap asian hand tools that they sell for almost as much as the domestic name brand tools they clearance'd for the aforementioned, because the
mark up is bigger and the average horse owner customer will only use them once or twice anyways. Why sell durable work wear when half the customers work in an office
and would rather buy a thin tee shirt with a cringey "country" saying on it? Why sell cultivator teeth when only 1 in 100 customers owns a cultivator? Why stock a good
assortment of quality hydraulic components when none of the employees know what they do, and only 1 in 50 customers owns anything hydraulic in the first place?
You can see where this is going. Having worked at one of those stores, I'd just be thankful that they have as much as they do. Regarding quantities of goods stocked, I
remember even then that many things took 1-2-3 weekly cycles to appear, but we never had any shortages of plastic outdoor canopies, chinese cowboy boots or flimsy
lawnmower wagons.
Like I said, this is where their money is, and what they care about, not some old farmer who wants a moldboard bolt or whatever.
So I bought all the clearance Cresent and Channel Lock tools I could, then quit when I entered trade school