Mitre 10 pink ladies' tool set rankles customer

The ladies tool set at a Rotorua Mitre 10. Photo / Supplied

A DIY shopper at Mitre10 has left a tongue-in-cheek complaint with the company after taking umbrage at the labelling of a pink set of "ladies" tools.

The basic tool set, which was being sold at a Rotorua Mitre 10 store, was made for smaller hands with pink detailing, its price sheet labelling it as "tool set ladies".

The woman, who asked the Herald not to name her, said marking the set out as being for women made it seem like everything else in the store was only for men.

"Until I saw your ladies range of tools yesterday, I was under the naive impression that your wares could be used by anyone," the woman wrote to the company on Facebook.

"Silly me. Of course there would be tools better suited to a woman's grip, since our webbed hands can make holding men's tools difficult.

"While I was admiring the lovely pink, flowery packaging of the ladies range, I became concerned that the sealants in my shopping basket might be for men only, so I set them down and went to Bunnings instead."

She added a question asking whether the tools she'd inherited from her mum which lacked "the flowery markers that signify they can be used by women" should be returned, before signing off saying she was "looking forward to [the company's] manly response".

Mitre 10 responded saying it had sold tools designed for smaller hands for several years, but said it would follow up on the packaging of the particular set in the woman's photo.

"Interestingly, although we have previously sourced smaller tools in other colours (and do have separates available) with the sets it's the pink ones that sell the most by a long shot - we get asked for them when they are out of stock," a Mitre 10 page administrator wrote.

"It seems some people like them to be quite distinctive so they don't end up getting borrowed and mixed up with other people's tools."

All tools were for all genders, the admin wrote.

The woman thanked Mitre 10 for its quick response, but said she still felt there was an implicit implication everything else in the store was for men.

Some comments were left on the post accusing the woman of having a problem with the colour pink, which she said missed the point of her criticism.

"I have no problem with tool sets for smaller hands or the colour pink. This ladies set of tools would have been bad enough next to a boys set that was blue and had cars printed all over it, but by itself it only managed to imply that everything else in the store was for men."

A Mitre 10 spokeswoman said she felt the company's Facebook comment had covered off its response and that the company welcomed customer feedback.