Thread: Festool Price Maintenance...or not?

Originally Posted by Beardy

I do think they make a nice product, their tracksaws are definitely superior to the others. For many the price paid is easily justified by the savings made using them, I guess that is not the case for others.
I am happy to pay the price if I can justify it but it is horses for courses, sometimes Ozito fits the bill.

Yes that's very balanced thinking. Where things fall apart with Festool is when people realise what they pay in Oz compared to what Europeans or Americans pay. It has gotten a little better over the years but there are still some very disproportionate prices happening, particularly with accessories. It's not so much that people don't want to pay the price for the quality, they don't want to pay the extra 'Stralia Tax that can sometimes go with it.

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Yes that's very balanced thinking. Where things fall apart with Festool is when people realise what they pay in Oz compared to what Europeans or Americans pay. It has gotten a little better over the years but there are still some very disproportionate prices happening, particularly with accessories. It's not so much that people don't want to pay the price for the quality, they don't want to pay the extra 'Stralia Tax that can sometimes go with it.

And every market that Festool is in has the same criticism from the domestic punters, it is always cheaper somewhere else. The Americans are vocal about that as are the Poms as are us in Oz. To me that says Festool are being even handed about pricing to each market they are in. I have no idea what their domestic pricing is like but would it be reasonable to assume it to be a bit cheaper. I know it was possible to import from Europe cheaper when the AUD was not underwater and holding its breath but is that still possible Brett?

By Zeus' beard!

Ive an ETS150/5 (off FenceFurniture! Thanks dude!) that I love. Its great.

Yesterday I sanded MIL's 35 year old melamine kitchen bench with 1500 and 2000 grit sandpapers (I use them for epoxy/urethane on boxes and... cars!). That old bench was manky and hideous.... then I treated it just like a cars horrible clear coat and it came up super lustrous and snazzy! Better than new.

The old hard pad (498988) finally gave up the ghost. Hardly surprising, as FF would have given it a fair pizzling and its done a lot of jobs for me. I've 3 spares, so I pop a new one on.

WHAT I WASN'T prepared for was the .... sticker shock.... nay, 5 billion volt electrocution I suffered from when I looked up the price to order another one....


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$89.50

Yep. A consumable plastic and foam pad with velcro..... EIGHTY NINE FRIGGIN dollerydoos. Plus post.

I found an identical replica from china for $10, postage included. The seller says its As Good As the Festool. I'll be giving that a go!!!!!!!

Maybe I'm wrong, but since when does a consumable, replaceable pad cost MORE than a new sander of another brand???? Are these made of super futuristic space magic meta materials?

Its crazy. $89. Insanity.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

By Zeus' beard!

Ive an ETS150/5 (off FenceFurniture! Thanks dude!) that I love. Its great.

Yesterday I sanded MIL's 35 year old melamine kitchen bench with 1500 and 2000 grit sandpapers (I use them for epoxy/urethane on boxes and... cars!). That old bench was manky and hideous.... then I treated it just like a cars horrible clear coat and it came up super lustrous and snazzy! Better than new.

The old hard pad (498988) finally gave up the ghost. Hardly surprising, as FF would have given it a fair pizzling and its done a lot of jobs for me. I've 3 spares, so I pop a new one on.

WHAT I WASN'T prepared for was the .... sticker shock.... nay, 5 billion volt electrocution I suffered from when I looked up the price to order another one....


..
..
..
..
..
..


$89.50

Yep. A consumable plastic and foam pad with velcro..... EIGHTY NINE FRIGGIN dollerydoos. Plus post.

I found an identical replica from china for $10, postage included. The seller says its As Good As the Festool. I'll be giving that a go!!!!!!!

Maybe I'm wrong, but since when does a consumable, replaceable pad cost MORE than a new sander of another brand???? Are these made of super futuristic space magic meta materials?

Its crazy. $89. Insanity.

Evan, welcome to Festool consumables, I am sure you will enjoy the trip.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

Evan, welcome to Festool consumables, I am sure you will enjoy the trip.

Well, on this trip I've been driven into the all-loving embrace of AliExpress.

For the sake of absolute transparency (Hello CCP overlords!) here are some of the products I'm looking at:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/6-In...951189780.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/gro...512964862.html

ALSO, Ive found some new pads for my Mirka Ceros 150. (man o man is THAT a fantastic sander)....

Might be worth grabiing one of each and giving them a blat.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

I know it was possible to import from Europe cheaper when the AUD was not underwater and holding its breath but is that still possible Brett?

Personally I don't know as I haven't had the call for it but I have seen posts on here from time to time where people have purchased something. Axeminster used to send to here but no longer do - someone musta had a word to them.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

And every market that Festool is in has the same criticism from the domestic punters, it is always cheaper somewhere else.

Ok, so an example of pricing from different places for the ETS EC150/3 sander and replacement pad.

Prices are shown with the local tax still in place, sander with a systainer.
Australia $979
Replacement pad $89.50 (202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin $70.50 (575190)

USA ~$728 (USD510 at an ex.rate of 0.70)
Replacement Pad $66 (USD46) (202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin $54 (USD38) (575190)
There may well be local taxes to go on that but I'm not silly enough to try to work them out.....

UK festool.uk $1081 (£584.40 at an ex.rate of 0.54)
Replacement Pad ~$105 (£56.76)(202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin $77 (£41.64) (575190)
I'm pretty sure you can get cheaper in the UK but it got to tedious to find out.


Germany (Festool.de) ~$1055 (€643.79 at ex rate 0.61)
Replacement Pad ~$102 (€62.48) (202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin $75 (€45.82) (575190)

BUT
at a regular dealer in Germany, where they do not allow Retail Price Maintenance, even for Festool (who got a MASSIVE fine for it about 5 or 6 years ago)

The sander is $910 (€555)
Replacement Pad ~$76 (€46.30) (202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin ~$57 (€35) (575190)

You will note that I have not provided links to the dealer

So it can be seen that the USA is now the cheapest by a long way, even allowing for say 10% tax to go on that price.
Close to them is Germany (but from a dealer).
Australia is next
UK is the most expensive.

Note that this is for one tool/accessory only and other examples may very wildly, as they have in the past. There has never been a uniform pattern where one could say "Germany is cheapest, or USA is cheapest across the board".

Originally Posted by woodPixel

$89.50

Yep. A consumable plastic and foam pad with velcro..... EIGHTY NINE FRIGGIN dollerydoos.

I know it's not funny, but I laughed when I read your post, because I had the exact same reaction when I had to purchase a new one several years ago. In my case however, my daughter was making a bed, and after glueing up a bunch of boards for the bed head, she needed to sand them. As this was her first significant sanding operation, it wasn't going fast enough, so she applied more force than she should have, and over time the little velcro hooks "melted" down, till they wouldn't grip the sand paper. I was busy, so my wife popped into the supplier and got a replacement. When she told me how much it cost I nearly fell out of my chair, and assumed she'd bought the wrong bit. The old one still sits in the systainer, as I just can't bring myself to throw it away. :/

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Ok, so an example of pricing from different places for the ETS EC150/3 sander and replacement pad.

Prices are shown with the local tax still in place, sander with a systainer.
Australia $979
Replacement pad $89.50 (202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin $70.50 (575190)

USA ~$728 (USD510 at an ex.rate of 0.70)
Replacement Pad $66 (USD46) (202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin $54 (USD38) (575190)
There may well be local taxes to go on that but I'm not silly enough to try to work them out.....

UK festool.uk $1081 (£584.40 at an ex.rate of 0.54)
Replacement Pad ~$105 (£56.76)(202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin $77 (£41.64) (575190)
I'm pretty sure you can get cheaper in the UK but it got to tedious to find out.


Germany (Festool.de) ~$1055 (€643.79 at ex rate 0.61)
Replacement Pad ~$102 (€62.48) (202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin $75 (€45.82) (575190)

BUT
at a regular dealer in Germany, where they do not allow Retail Price Maintenance, even for Festool (who got a MASSIVE fine for it about 5 or 6 years ago)

The sander is $910 (€555)
Replacement Pad ~$76 (€46.30) (202460)
Box 50 P150grit 48 Hole Rubin ~$57 (€35) (575190)

You will note that I have not provided links to the dealer

So it can be seen that the USA is now the cheapest by a long way, even allowing for say 10% tax to go on that price.
Close to them is Germany (but from a dealer).
Australia is next
UK is the most expensive.

Note that this is for one tool/accessory only and other examples may very wildly, as they have in the past. There has never been a uniform pattern where one could say "Germany is cheapest, or USA is cheapest across the board".

All things considered being such a small market but spread over a large area and a long way from everyone else we are doing alright for price me thinks.

The USA would be cheaper like they are for most things because their wages and overheads are low by comparison.
German cars in USA are about half what we pay for them here to.

Having had a look recently some of the Festool tools are actually more expensive in the US than here - the cordless drills for example.

There was a window of time where it was far cheaper to buy from the UK. It was shortly after Brexit was announced, the pound dropped, the stock on hand still reflected the stronger pound (prices subsequently rose significantly as the effect of the lower pound raised the price to restock) and you didn't pay the 20% VAT nor the 10% GST on purchases from the UK. For example, you could get a Domino 500 kit along with the cutter and domino systainer kit, and shipping for under $1100 aud vs $1800 ? here. Now it's significantly more expensive to buy from the UK than locally, even if they would sell to you (again this seems to have been clamped down on).

Cheers, Dom

I had another experience with buying that is similar to what Festool does. Rotax Bombadier developed a racing kart motor, it was the first self starting water cooled motor developed specifically to bolt straight onto a kart with all bits supplied. They very carefully sold it at a price in each country that was close to parity when calculated against each country's currency when compared to the US dollar and it was impossible to get a price advantage by importing from elewhere.

Originally Posted by Beardy

All things considered being such a small market but spread over a large area and a long way from everyone else we are doing alright for price me thinks.

On that particular example, yes. You might say that you wouldn't buy the sander from Germany and pay the freight to here, but don't forget that that 19% VAT comes off those German prices, which means about a 16% discount. So that means that sander becomes $764 without any GST (which may or may not get added, depending on which dealer you use). Freight would be around $60-70.

It is not necessarily the same trend across the other tools.

Domino Set & Systainer in Germany $1477 (€901), in Australia $1799 (~22% more), so there's a pretty significant difference there. However, the Systainer of domino pieces + cutters is $330 (€202) in Germany or $323 here - go figure. Curiously, and I know this for an absolute fact, that same product was $415 or fully 28% more in 2012 (7 years ago)....here...in Oz. That's the sort of shenanigans that's been going on with pricing. The disparity between here and anywhere else was bigger a few years ago. OTOH, the ill-fated Ti15 was cheaper here than it was in Germany in it's very short life (2012-3?).

The Kapex 120 stayed at $1850 here for something like 5-6 years. In the same period it steadily rose overseas - I was watching. The best estimate I can put on why that was happening was that the Oz prices stayed the same over a number of years to slowly bring them more into line with prices elsewhere.

Now the question is, WHY would they do that? Why would the local operation reduce their profit margins? One can only surmise that is was because of the protests from people who were actually capable of using the internet (perhaps they thought we couldn't?) and realising what was going on - plus the volume of sales that were NOT being made locally due to people flipping the bird and purchasing overseas. One way or another we were played as mugs for quite some time, but that seems to be diminishing.

Well, with regard to the original post, the HKC EB plus kit with 2x 5.2Ah airstream batteries, sca8 charger and systainer is $970- plus shipping from Axminster in the UK, vs $640usd or approx $903- aud but with a cheaper, older charger from the USA and... drumroll please.. $745 aud on sale in Australia from the apparently rogue retailer. A win for Australia! Yay. Rrp is $994- in Aus, so even then comparable to UK and USA.


Cheers, Dom

Originally Posted by DomAU

Having had a look recently some of the Festool tools are actually more expensive in the US than here - the cordless drills for example.

There was a window of time where it was far cheaper to buy from the UK. It was shortly after Brexit was announced, the pound dropped, the stock on hand still reflected the stronger pound (prices subsequently rose significantly as the effect of the lower pound raised the price to restock) and you didn't pay the 20% VAT nor the 10% GST on purchases from the UK. For example, you could get a Domino 500 kit along with the cutter and domino systainer kit, and shipping for under $1100 aud vs $1800 ? here. Now it's significantly more expensive to buy from the UK than locally, even if they would sell to you (again this seems to have been clamped down on).

Cheers, Dom

Yes to all this - at the time I grabbed a DTS 400 and the LR32 system. I wish I had the cash at the time to buy more, but didn't. A check on pricing several months later and lo and behold, all the savings had evaporated and it was just as cost effective to buy locally.