Festool clamps now made in Vietnam?

[RussellS]

And Amazon sells lots of Chinese and Vietnamese and Thailand and Taiwan and Philippine stuff.  If they only sold USA made stuff, their sales would be miniscule.  And they would only employ a few hundred people at most.  Or less.  Maybe ten people in total. 

Amazon was already a billion dollar business when they only sold books, were it started. I think those books weren't made in Asia.

I sure hopes this works.  First time ever trying to quote prior posts inside a post and writing in between!!!!
Amazon started mid 1994.  Amazon goes public stock mid 1997.  $160 million sales in 1997.  $1.6 billion in 1999.  Late 2002 they start selling other stuff on their website besides books.  Yes the books were not printed in Asia.  I checked some of my books on the shelves and they all say printed in the USA.  You are The Netherlands.  Were your books printed in The Netherlands?  Or were they printed in a foreign country and imported?

So you would have tens and tens and tens of thousands of unemployed Amazon people without jobs if Amazon did not sell Chinese stuff.  Would unemployed Amazon employees support local businesses?

Chinese stuff is only as cheap as it is because they have legalised what we call slave labour. If our markets weren't flooded with products made by slave labour, we would have to produce those products locally, and that would yield a lot more jobs for local people, who could then in turn support local businesses.

Producing products locally?  Festool is made in Germany, not Netherlands.  Assume not made by slaves so its OK to buy Festool in Netherlands.  Telephones and computers and televisions are more or less only made in China or SE Asia.  Legalized slave labor down there.  Do you have any companies in Netherlands or western Europe who could make all the phones, computers, TVs that Europe wants to buy?  And would they have any spare capacity to make them for the USA?  And at what price could they make them?  Cell phones here are a few hundred if you buy them unrestricted so you can use them with any network.  TVs close to $1000 for the huge LCD screen ones now.  Laptops under $1000.  I only have one of each.  But couples will have two phones and two computers.  Add kids in and you get a phone for every kid and maybe a couple extra computers and TVs too.  Do you want to spend $3000 for a phone?  $2000 for a TV?  $8000 for a computer?  Times four if wife and two kids included.  Would you have any money leftover to buy food for a family of four?

By the way, Amazon employees sometimes make so little they qualify for food stamps. With their income, you think they're supporting a lot of other businesses anyway?

The internet stories I saw were about WalMart employees being on food stamps.  But Amazon employees could be too.  Food stamps are spent at the local grocery store or WalMart which sells groceries.  So local support I guess.  Yes I am for people earning more money to buy things they want and/or need.  I support raising the minimum wage.  But there is a conflict.  I like getting stuff cheap too.  If labor costs go up for everyone making stuff, then likely prices go up too.  So I get less for my money.  I want everyone to have more money.  But its kind of a danged if you do, danged if you don't paradox.  Me AND You benefit greatly from having legalized slaves in SE Asia make us stuff like phones, laptops, TVs, etc.

 

[JeremyH.]

Amazon has made it clear they want to wipe out all the competition. Then it doesn't matter how much money you have, if all money is spent with them.

 

[DeformedTree]

Amazon made no profit for most it's existence. Everything was put right back into growing. They knew they had to get so big no one would be able to compete or re-create what they have.

Far as prices.  Clearly when people talk about local, their comments are more along the lines of wanting stuff made in countries of similar laws, regulations, labor practices, wages, etc.  Thus made in the US, Canada, EU, Japan, New Zealand is all fine.  To those concerned about prices, yes, they will go up some. But remember if all this stuff is getting made in these countries, that is all jobs in those countries, and higher wages.  The more people with jobs, and the more people with higher wages, the less we all pay in taxes.

Does anyone wish they could find a way to pay more for Festool or say Mafell products?  No. But when you are paying the kind of money, you know where it's going and how the price got there (for the most part). But when a company abuses that and start trying to get the same price for something that wasn't made from the same path that people are willing to pay for, there is a problem. No different than when they make other bad moves (systainer 3, removal of metric, replacing switches with membrane pads, etc). These are things that make people rethink spending money with a company.  Sending it off to another country is the same issue.

Again, there is no reason to think a clamp made in Vietnam will be bad quality, it could even be better for various reasons (new plant, new tools). That isn't the argument to have with these companies. It's to get them to understand people are paying to support companies making stuff in the countries above, to pay good wages, to follow environmental regs in those countries.

No one faults the workers in the Vietnam plant either, they are just doing a job and supporting families too, it's aspects out of their control that are the problem.

 

[Spandex]

I'm with you. But it seems harder to do one's best to contribute to that when it's all willy-nilly not-sure where things are from.

But this is about a company moving production from one country to another, neither of which are the country you live in. At that point, I can’t really see how buying a clamp manufactured in Vietnam is any different to buying a clamp manufactured in Germany, if the product is identical.

 

[JeremyH.]

I would prefer "made for Festool by xxxx"

Just like I don't go to KC Tools to buy stuff made in Taiwan.

 

[Coen]

As if local businesses pay their workers a lot better...

 

[ChuckM]

According to Wiki...

 

[mino]

Nice joke. They don't have any protection laws.
...
Also nice joke.
...

They do. This is not 1980 anymore, and even then they had some just laws which were just ignored locally ..

True, some "protections" are "unofficial" but this is not unlike in Germany when many protection rules are union-based agreements. My point being the times of

 

[demographic]

Err, isn't Germany Overseas as well? Where do you live and could you walk to Germany from there without swimming?

 

[mino]

Err, isn't Germany Overseas as well? Where do you live and could you walk to Germany from there without swimming?

Well, "off-shore" is really a UK-specific term ... as everything non-UK is "off-shore/overseas" in the UK context. It just caught on globally I guess and is used even for intra-continent services/production.

I have about 100 miles to the German border. The second biggest Festool plant is actually in Czech Republic in Ceska Lipa, close to the German border.

In Europe there is a common word these days "near-shoring" e.g. for German companies setting up plants in Czech republic or Czech companies in Poland or even Austria etc. Does not even have to be a generally "cheaper" country. Basically, setting up plants in different jurisdictions but "close" culturally and geographically. Has nothing to do with any seas or shores but who am I to argue about proper use of English. Eh.

[big grin]

 

[Coen]

I don't know about the comment about swimming... bridges exist for some time outside the UK now you know  [tongue]

Although I'm not patient enough to do it walking. I usually use the bi/tri cycle.

 

[DeformedTree]

Off Shore isn't just a UK thing, it's standard term in the US too.  For the most part, offshore = Southeast Asian countries.  Of course those are the only places manufacturing of stuff shifts too.  No one shuts down a plant in Ohio and moves it to Germany.

In the end, Mino's comments align with what you would hear from folks in manufacturing here.  Yes labor is cheaper there, but any proper manufacturing, labor is a small part of the cost.  The main reasons to go to places like China is to avoid regulations on plants that make them expensive to run here, mainly environmental stuff.  Putting in a Paint Booth, or even worse, some sort of coating/dipping line in the US is something you avoid if you can.  Foundries are another item that "makes sense" to do elsewhere. But as was mentioned, places like China are maturing fast and cracking down on the same stuff, they are now looking for places to dump off stuff that they don't want done there.

 

[Northwoodsman]

I bought two of the ratchet clamps back in August and they wouldn't hold at all.  As soon as I turned the sander or router on they fell to the floor.  I took them in to Woodcraft where I purchased them and they verified that they would not hold; the surface was too polished/slippery.  They gave me two more replacements.  After a couple of uses, the same thing happened to one of them.  I took them back and got two of the cheaper Festool screw clamps.  They wouldn't hold either.  I called Festool and they tried to tell me that it was user error.  5 different employees at Woodcraft who had used them for years verified it was the clamps!  I purchased two sets of the same clamps with the Bessy colors and logo and they work perfect every time.

 

[ChuckM]

5 different employees at Woodcraft who had used them for years verified it was the clamps! 

I can't but wonder what happened to the clamps that you returned. Did the staff just put them back on the shelf for the next customer?

And what happened to all others in the inventory? Did they make an effort to check every one of them?

 

[Mini Me]

I have the screw type and while they hold some of the time they do let go on some jobs and if holding is critical I won't use them. If I had bought them from Festool they would have been returned but they came from a friend though he had never used them.

 

[Michael Kellough]

There is a sweet spot in how rough the bar should be in sliding clamps. Festool clamps tend to be a little too smooth so they are easier to set but they also tend to slip.

I have a bunch of Axminster guide rail clamps which have a lot more texture and never slip but are harder to set because the sliding head so readily grabs the bar.

 

[johnyhuh]

Can Festool or anyone confirm which locations Festool clamps are manufactured?

Got in a couple ratchet clamps from one of my usual suppliers, and am disappointed they are now being made in Vietnam, not Germany. I'm thinking, why pay $42 for a clamp made overseas...can anyone confirm this is legit and if so, that the quality is the same?

Photo of my original clamps has the Germany stamp.

I got two variations. Don't know where the second is manufactured, but they are very different. Original one from Germany feels better and has 6 notches vs 5 notches on the new one. Also, new one is not 90 degrees on the top and longer as well.

 

[mino]

I got two variations. Don't know where the second is manufactured, but they are very different. Original one from Germany feels better and has 6 notches vs 5 notches on the new one. Also, new one is not 90 degrees on the top and longer as well.

That "new one" seems like an improvement on the design on the angle. When clamping the top bends, it is better to not have the 90 degrees but less. Mine from 2019 are not "Germany" but still have the 90 degree angle and I wish it was less .. like on yours.
As for less notches - hard to say.

These are definitely conscious design changes, independent of where/who makes them.

 

[woodbutcherbower]

I guess we all perceive things differently based on our own individual experience.

My individual experience is that of a professional joiner who has spent 40 years on the tools, and whose heavy-duty site work requires equipment built to top-drawer standards of durability. As a consequence, I've used a selection of Hilti machines since pretty much forever. Some of these tools are 15 years old, they look like junk, and they've been absolutely tortured - but they all still work as well as the day I bought them. The gearbox in my core drill looks like it came out of a miniature Kenworth or Scania truck.

So I recently upgraded a European-built SF6H 22-volt combi for their new Gen 2 brushless version. Although the 5-year-old Gen 1 was still working fine, the combi is probably the single most-used tool on the van, and because of this - I figured that having two combis would represent a safety net. So I pulled the trigger 'just in case'. For the first time, I was staggered to see 'Made in China' stamped on the casing. I shrugged it off, figuring that surely Hilti knew what they were doing, that they wouldn't do anything to damage their stellar reputation - and I put it to work.

7 months in - it's on its 3rd replacement chuck, its 2nd motor, its 2nd gearbox, its 3rd trigger switch and its 2nd control board. The housing and carry case are all that's left of the original tool. And remember - this is a premium, EXPENSIVE product which cost even more than the original Gen 1, European-built version. Although I can't fault Hilti's outstanding customer service, warranty or repair service in any way - that isn't the point. The point is that the quality has bombed. Coincidence? Bad luck? a Friday afternoon product? I really have no idea if the above is in any way connected to the country of manufacture - but it's sure left a bitter taste, and one which totally reinforces my (maybe old-school, biased) perception that if a tool doesn't say 'Made in Germany/England/Europe' or 'Made in the USA' on it - then it's not going to be as good as something which does say that on it. I'd love a manufacturer to prove me wrong.

Just my 10 cents worth.

 

[mino]

I guess we all perceive things differently based on our own individual experience.
... snip ...

This is a good example where *moving* a given tool production causes a mess.

When a company introduces a model designed (and tested, design tuned etc.) from ground-up to be made in different country, they are likely to get it right.
When they go the "easy" way and save also the R&D doing a "let's just make the proven design at a cheaper location" approach it usually goes to ... add your favorite expletive.

The same would happen if a chinese-production-tuned tool design was "transferred" to US. Get a sufficiently different culture with a sufficiently "smart" bean-counter who assumes "people are just people" ... and ... it works. He gets his bonuses and if off faster than the consequences blow up.
So all good. Right?  [unsure]