Why is festool so much more expensive here ?

[1steven]

I remember many years back dropping into the Dalwhinny distillery just off the A9 in Scotland whilst on the way to see an account.

I was really quite excited thinking I was going to pick up a bottle at maybe 50% discount...

Ha - It was actually cheaper in my local shop 350 miles South.

Plus I didn't have to queue with hundreds of Japanese tourists to buy it from my local ...

I can buy a bottle of Highland Park cheaper at Tesco Kirkwall than at the Highland park shop.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I had an off licence years ago. For a particular can of beer I paid 36p from the supermarket, 37p from the trade cash and carry and 38p from the brewer.

 

[MrBear]

I've had a quick look at tax/duty differences between UK and US. Apparently we pay tax on shipping and insurance as well as the goods and the US just taxes the goods.

I did some calculations for £20,000 worth of drills coming from China and just on the goods, we pay £4,400 tax (20% VAT) and duty (2%) on them, if shipping and insurance is £1,200 but that would put it up to £4,664. In the US they pay just under £1,000 in duty, but then have taxes to pay on top, but their taxes average out at about 5% so would be another £860. So minimum total costs would be UK £25,864 plus and US £22,760. However that is with the cheapest shipping which may or may not apply and that's with a 20ft container, 40ft would almost double UK prices but work out better in the US at the higher end of the cost scale.

So that's for about 100 premium drills now imagine you are shipping in a million which is possible for a company in the US, much less likely for the UK, and you can see why they work out so much cheaper in the US, although not taken into account the distribution costs for getting those drills around the country, but I'm guessing that won't make a huge dent. Plus take into account that most goods are duty free into the US from Mexico and then you can see why Milwaukee have a factory there to make their tools, so they just have distribution costs.