Another Festool price increase?


rodger.

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I wonder what the justification is. 9% is heafty while most raw materials are on the decrease. I think exchange rates are favorable now too. With a strong hobby consumer, there has got to be significant price elasticity for the product. Totally their prerogative but I hope they rethink this.

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I wonder what the justification is. 9% is heafty while most raw materials are on the decrease. I think exchange rates are favorable now too. With a strong hobby consumer, there has got to be significant price elasticity for the product. Totally their prerogative but I hope they rethink this.

 

A major retailer of Festool in Toronto (Atlas Machinery) indicated that some tools will be even higher (up to 12%).  My guess that the weak CDN dollar is involved, but I am confident that the price won't drop again when our dollar improves.

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Frankin Pug... interesting that I haven't received any such notification in the states... I wonder if this does have something to do with the CDN weakening against the Euro.  Maybe I just haven't been watching my e-mail closely enough but you might be on to something about this being limited to your country.

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Frankin Pug... interesting that I haven't received any such notification in the states... I wonder if this does have something to do with the CDN weakening against the Euro.  Maybe I just haven't been watching my e-mail closely enough but you might be on to something about this being limited to your country.

 

head over the the FOG for more info.  Lots of posts.

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Only a casual observer of financial markets, but stronger $ means takes less $ to buy a euro, no? Makes European goods less expensive? Checking out the charts, US should get a cost decrease CAN gets a cost increase vs the Euro all else equal. Or I've got it backwards... Whatever, festool is crazy expensive in any currency. Too bad festool is also crazy awesome...

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Why drop the price for Americans when they can just jack it up for Canadians?  That's what I'd do if I were Mr. Tool.

 

It's a free market...if it were a crappy product and people weren't willing to pay the price, they'd have to lower it.  Festool sells for the price the market dictates.  Eventually they'll reach a point where they'll see a drop in sales if they jack the price up too much, and they'll have to decide if the increased profit on fewer sales is as good or better than lower profit on more sales.  I know which I'd prefer as a consumer...unfortunately I'm not a shareholder so my only say in the matter is buying or not buying.

 

There's a ton of Kool-Aid being guzzled right now and for the last decade...Festool is hot, and average people are willing to pay what would ordinarily be a ridiculous price for product X.  It's artificially inflated because of hype, and they're happy to ride that wave as far as it takes them.

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The change that Franklin is talking about is definitely because of the CAD weakening versus the USD.  Lee Valley came close to dropping the entire line (packed up the in-store displays), because they buy from Festool in USD, but sell under Festool's set retail price policy in CAD.  That meant that LV was going to be losing on every sale, and so Festool agreed to change the Canadian price.

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The change that Franklin is talking about is definitely because of the CAD weakening versus the USD.  Lee Valley came close to dropping the entire line (packed up the in-store displays), because they buy from Festool in USD, but sell under Festool's set retail price policy in CAD.  That meant that LV was going to be losing on every sale, and so Festool agreed to change the Canadian price.

Sound logic, I would put money on this being the case. Not actually a cost increase, it is an increase in MAP pricing. The cost increase has already been absorbed through the exchange rate. Sorry Canadians. At least you get cheap meds.

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Sound logic, I would put money on this being the case. Not actually a cost increase, it is an increase in MAP pricing. The cost increase has already been absorbed through the exchange rate. Sorry Canadians. At least you get cheap meds.

 

There was extensive discussion of it on the Canadian Woodworking forum, including an explanation from Rob Lee.

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Sound logic, I would put money on this being the case. Not actually a cost increase, it is an increase in MAP pricing. The cost increase has already been absorbed through the exchange rate. Sorry Canadians. At least you get cheap meds.

No cheap meds here - we pay through high tax rate.

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I DO NOT want to get into a political talk, but out of curiosity, what are the tax rates in Canada?

Income tax is between 21 and 38 percent, depending on income (unless a person is over 150k annually, then goes up to 42%). Ontario Sales tax is 13% on everything a person buys that is not food (junk food is taxable, however). Property tax varies widely by municipality.

Alberta has no provincial debt, so they have a sales tax rate of only 5% or so (which goes to the Feds).

Nova Scotia is 15% sales tax. Not sure of the other provinces, but are likely to be 13 to 15 % sales tax.

The northern territories (yukon, for example) are different I think.

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