itchy said:
I agree with others, due to the price increases there are now many FESTOOL items I cannot justify buying and the rest will have to offer compelling advantages over the competition. All the talk about currencies is something most people don't think about when comparing tool prices, if you live and work in Canada $500 is $500 not $565.
I have most of festool's line and I enjoy using them but if I were starting out today at today's prices I would go with the competition on some items.
I'm in agreement here. My tool purchases profile intermingles other mainstream Brand names because while they do essentially the same job/outcome for most of the tasks they are employed for. Maybe they don't necessarily have the the same dust control they are more than suitable for the task at hand.
In a perfect world I'd have all Festools tools where it made sense to do so. But the reality is that I can't justify the expense at the price point vs. the ROI modelling.
A case in point is the Kapex, I'd love to have one to lug to job sites for trim moulding in condos, and the DC, but I have a huge 12" Hitachi scms that weighs a ton but is perfect for large crown jobs as it has a digital readout that allows angles down to .3 of a degree (very accurate and I cut crown on the flat using an app to set the compound mitre). But, it is a major pita to lug around. So, unless I'm doing crown I use a super accurate Swedish made manual mitre saw I bought at LV to cut base and casings which creates zero airborne dust in a small condo on the 18th floor.
http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=32926&cat=1,42884,43836
For 20-50 LF of casing or base from a water damage claim it doesn't make sense to drag the big saw around.
That said, with the all the costs to run the business such as CPP, WCB, Insurance, promotion, taxes, etc.... And still make decent margin it is easy for some to say that every expensive tool will pay for itself, yadda, yadda. But at the cost for the Kapex, just to offset the tool cost with the stand and mitre extensions ($2,000+) one would have to do an extra $40,000 job at a 37% margin just to offset the additional incremental cost of the saw which doesn't make sense for me at this juncture.
I too doubt that prices will go down if the CAD rises in value against the USD, the parallel would be the price of fuel that has gone down here in Alberta to $.80/L because of low oil prices. The oil prices continue to drop, but now the fuel prices are rising substantially and now they are blaming supply and demand issues because of strikes and refinery issues in the US.
The only way prices will "adjust" for Festool tools is if sales overall in the US decline because of S&D and then and only then if Festool's market share in the US is large enough they may reduce pricing if margin can still be achieved. Canada is such a small marketplace for Festool so in the grand scheme of things we really don't have much influence on such things. We probably are less than 5-10% of what the US marketplace is to them.
The only thing that would help at this juncture is direct importation from Festool Germany to Canada to be set up which would be a win-win for Festool, Dealers and Festool purchasers, but it may not make business sense for Festool to do this.