The only thing that manufacturers can legally "require" regarding pricing is on advertising. It is perfectly legal for them to forbid advertising below MSRP. Actual sales pricing cannot be directly controlled.
That being said, the retailers are fully within their rights under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in the USA to actually sell a product for whatever price they choose... even at a loss. They just can't advertise that price if a contract forbids it. The problem arises when said dealer gets a reputation for selling below their competitor's pricing and regularly discounting. The manufacturer or distributor may then find some other justification to remove authorized dealer status from that retailer and thereby take away his/her ability to sell those products.
I personally went through this back when I had a small chain of retail computer stores in the 80's. IBM in those days had a iron-clad, hard rule about advertised pricing on their new IBM PC. The reps would tell you that you were fully within your rights to actually sell the computer for whatever you wanted, but if they found you were discounting it, they would find some other reason to cancel your authorization... and I knew of a few other dealers who were in fact shut out through one method or another. True Big Blue, Big Brother tactics!
This is not to say that Festool is anything like IBM, though there ARE 'some' parallels, just as there are with many, many other manufacturers. The final reality is that the customer is always the King in the end, and if the price point on a given product meets the perceived price/value to the end user, then a sale is made. Otherwise, the product will languish on a shelf. Clearly, Festool products meet that value perception!
Cheers,
Frank
in case the answer is favorable to me), that has older versions of dust extractors (non T-LOC versions) that reflect pre-April pricing (or earlier - not sure). Since these are earlier versions, are they allowed to sell these at lower pricing for clearance purposes? Sorry for the silly question.
