How green grass is on other side of fences comes to mind in this thread.
In the end, lots of people one one side want what the other side has, and vice versa. I have no doubt if a lot of folks from the EU came to NA, they would quickly be disappointed with a lot of stuff here and miss what they had. Same for the other way around. Where the problem gets worse is when people never have a chance to decide what grass they would like. Others pre-decided what folks want on one side and only supply that, then big shocker, that becomes the norm there.
It would be nice to see more company let people decide and give things a chance. Festool looks to operate with a stereotype idea of what the N.A. consumer is and what they want, that doesn't help things at all.
On the TKS, I still don't see why people keep bringing up saw stop current NA products. Those don't in any way match up with the TKS. I don't see why anyone says something about the job site saw. If the current saw stop offerings were want someone wanted, they would just buy one by now. Festool could have brought the CS70 saw to the US market, it would clearly be welcome as the Erika is the only similar saw out there.
Ever since the spread sheet a few years ago with model number listings had a TKS80 NA part number in it, people have just assumed it will be offered in the US.
I've said it before, Festool should take a page from Mafell and offer stuff in the US as is, no changes, keep it metric, 230V, etc. Maybe it's not a high volume seller, but it's a good way to find out. It is what many folks are looking for, and forcing folks to go thru great hassels to buy stuff from Germany and get it here doesn't make much sense. You have the product, keep cost low by not messing with it. If it sells well and people want to see say a 110V version, maybe now you justify it. Or maybe find out people really don't want the modified version. Mafell got rid of the 110V/inch ruled Erika 70 in the US, now it too is 230V/metric like the 85. I have no doubt even things like selling 230V CT's in NA would generate a good bit of sales.