So, I've owned festool tools for over 20 yrs and I've never seen things so bad! My local rep was fired, ive heard local reps across the country are in short supply, just like the tools. My local Acme tools has almost no festool display space anymore and see that at other dealers as well.  Im really hoping that its just Covid, but it seems even the folks in Lebanon, OH aren't as nice on the phone.....is it just me, or is Festool in trouble or what???

During the early part of the Covid crisis Festool kit was flying off the shelves. I am not sure about the last few months as I had been out of touch with Festool UK.

A Festool UK Rep was unable to visit in October but we are now in touch again and I have no doubt that all is well despite the pressures of Covid.

Many of the Festool staff will be working from home and finding it very busy. I am sure that sales are buoyant and that is why they find it difficult to keep up with orders. It must be particularly difficult for the Reps whose day to day business is visiting distributors and attending shows - neither of which is happening at the moment here in the UK.

Peter

[modified after an update]

Yeah,
 at least in Europe the DYI market exploded in the spring/summer due to the lock-downs and people suddenly having time for long-planned projects.

I had placed a Makita rail connector order in May and the shipment arrived in September (!). This for an extremely simple mass-produced part. It was nowhere available in Europe for a couple months actually.

It seems the supply chains were simply not stocked for such a sales rush which also was not "spread out" but likely had a different focus than a normal sales distribution does.
Even "mass" brands experienced supply issues throughout the year. Given how lean&mean Festool is normally operating, I would expect them to be hit pretty hard.

They likely had to emergency-restart production of a lot of parts where the stocks would otherwise last them a lot longer. Further decreasing the efficiency and effective production rates. Not to mention employees being sick home office productivity loss etc.

Lets hope it gets all sorted soon! On all accounts.

Thanks for the heads up Bert!

And yes, some of the local Festool sites are a little slow while loading/navigating - noticing this on my MacBook w/ Safari as well. And late night, I have trouble loading the FOG as well. But I guess that's when the server is busy creating a backup file.

Kind regards,
Oliver

The flow of parts from the Far East to Europe and Northern America is also impeded by the scarcity of shipping containers in the producing countries — it seems that the circulation of containers has slowed down because recycling products (which form a very large part of the stream of goods from West to East) are often not welcome anymore, eg the waste paper business has almost collapsed.


Imagine being dependent on certain fasteners or other parts made in Taiwan for the assembly of —let’s say sanders— and none have been shipped for a while. That would cause some serious production delays.



BTW I went to do some shopping today in 'our equivalent' of Costco & noticed that the container terminal nearby was absolutely jampacked with containers — presumably empty and waiting for cargo to be shipped.

Festool is not OK, nobody is OK right now because our governments are destroying our economy with their draconian lockdown measures.

They think everybody has a gold stash hidden away and it is simply not true. People are seriously hurting financially right now, and companies that sell luxury goods like Festool are the first to feel that.

If the government keeps this up, the situation is going to get very bad for all of us.

 

Festool is not OK, nobody is OK right now because our governments are destroying our economy with their draconian lockdown measures.

They think everybody has a gold stash hidden away and it is simply not true. People are seriously hurting financially right now, and companies that sell luxury goods like Festool are the first to feel that.

If the government keeps this up, the situation is going to get very bad for all of us.

I fully support your sentiment and view. Thankfully our gov finally returned to sanity and now enforces restrictions purely to a level of avoiding a health system overload. The notion of "eradicating the un-eradicable" was dropped recently - what a good grief that was!


But will disagree that a "luxury/high end" brands are the ones first affected.

Expensive products are normally bought by people who can afford it.
These tend to be the same people who have the buffers in place to "ride out the storm", so to speak. Their buying habits change less compared to the bulk of the market.

The most hit in a general crisis tend to be the "middle of the market" product lines. Their customers are more likely to migrate to the lower end market. This in turn compensates the lower end market's loss of "cannot afford anymore" customers.

Also, not sure how in other places, but over here the tradesmen are flooded with work, especially during the lock-downs, as people try to use the time-at-home to get long planned stuff done.

Agreed with Alex and others that the economic aspect of this crisis has been greatly exacerbated by government mismanagement, incompetence, and negligence.

I have no idea about Festool but I agree with the comments that supply chain, shipping and other issues are affecting everyone.

As an anecdote: back in the summer which was between waves of infection here (Toronto suburbs) I was helping buiild a small concrete pad for a pool heater.  We do the excavation, prepare the forms, spread the gravel, add the reinforcing mesh and now go to Home Depot for the concrete.  On the skid in the concrete section there are three (3) 66kg bags of standard mix.  We need nine, so we ask the guy working there if he can bring another skid.  He says there are no more skids, what is there is it for concrete, and they have no idea when they are getting more, because COVID.

This is for a simple bulk product which I suspect is made locally or at least in Canada, it is is hard to reconcile a shortage with container or shipping issues.  But I guess the guy who makes the bags, or the guy who drives the truck, or the guy who fixes the truck, or the guy who loads or unloads the truck could be off sick, or taking care of someone who is sick. 

Undoubtedly the lockdown has increased the demand for many products and materials and likely broken most inventory / stocking / manufacturing / shipping algorithms.

Also COVID has become the all-purpose excuse for all sorts of ineptitude and general slacking off.

We ended up buying the last nine bags of _premium_ concrete they had on another skid.  So it is a pretty fancy pad for a pool heater.

What town is the Rockler in with the Dominos?

T

Quote from: Mjolner174 on January 13, 2021, 05:08 PM

What town is the Rockler in with the Dominos?

Cincinnati

Which is amusing since Woodcraft is about a mile down the road.

People are seriously hurting financially right now, and companies that sell luxury goods like Festool are the first to feel that.

On the contrary, this is surprisingly not true at all, at least for North America. I work in ecommerce, we sell luxury goods, stuff to buy when you have money to burn. We had a heck of a year, sales are through the roof. We are hurting a bit, but not because of the lack of sales, it's inventory problems related to container shortages and the upcoming Chinese New Year which at some factories will last for a never heard before 8 weeks!

A lot of Festool tools are on backorder as well, meaning their inventory was practically wiped out. They should be doing really well in terms of sales. Fulfilling those back orders is going to be a challenge though.

My guess is that when everything is closed due to covid a lot of folks with steady income start saving a lot of money that in normal times would be spend on eating out, going to the movies, travel, vacations, etc. This saved money is not going to sit at the bank, it's getting spent online. With nothing else to do shopping becomes the only available pastime for many.

And for our friends from the UK, there seems to be some serious hick-ups at the border right now. Customers having trouble filling out the correct paperwork/ filling out the paperwork correctly. Causing even a well situated veteran of the cargo/shipping world like DB Schenker to temporarily halt shipments to the UK.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/db-schenker-suspends-deliveries-to-u-k-due-to-brexit-trouble

I guess we really just need patience and be well-disposed towards each other, be it private or commercial.

Covid, Brexit, that's all going to stick with us for some time ... Germany hit another Covid death toll record today ... 1244 ...


Kind regards,
Oliver

Hi Oliver

There is (or certainly was) a third factor that has caused huge hold-ups and that is the off-balance of container movements. The numbers coming into the UK were greatly increased as we went into November probably as a pre-Brexit stocking up exercise for industry and retail. As a result the ports became clogged with empty containers because the trade was not balanced (a match between imports and exports).

I have been waiting for some machinery which should be inbound from the US but had to be diverted to Antwerp. I am told that it should arrive this month having originally been forecast for November.

The stock piling will have ceased now and I am sure that the container situation is being sorted out. However, the newly introduced paperwork for cross border trade will take a while to settle down as people get used to the form filling and border checks. It will be okay very soon I hope.

Peter

As someone in the US, the situation with the EU and the UK is interesting.  I don't see the 2 sides deciding to massively reduce business between each other, so it means companies will have to learn how to work/sell/trade/etc in and out of the EU bubble. For those of us who try to buy things from the EU just to hit the wall of the EU where companies are "international" but only in the sense of "within the EU", it might make things much better for us.  If they have to learn it and set things up for the UK, they might then take the steps to sell in and out of Canada/USA more.

Or the UK finds itself with more trade back and forth with the US.  UK could join NAFTA

I'm sure a lot of folks over there are learning fast that no matter what kind of complaints they might have had with the EU, that things worked very smoothly, even if they didn't understand/accept it.

The biggest trade hurdles are not paperwork but regulatory. And this part is not changing - the UK has agreed to keep aligned to EU standards.

The current delays are of the "new paperwork which no one knew how it will look ahead of time as deal was signed on last minute" sort. It is temporary and does not create any real design/compliance demands on the producers per above.

The biggest hurdle for power /but not only/ tools export to US is the local "litigious" culture. Injury claims which in Europe (bar UK, mind you) would be thrown out on the grounds of user "not applying appropriate caution" have a pretty good chance to succeed in US. Not to mention the costs for an (often small and specialized) company to defend in court even if they win. Just not worth it if you are not planning to "go big".

In Europe, everyone knows such cases will be thrown out at first instance, so does not even try ... A cultural thing I guess.

While I didn't need much of any Festool related last year, my local dealer WAS selling at a higher rate even with Covid and all its related issues /effects on Supply Chain,  until stocks became back ordered form being sold out.
 I DID however need things from other places, and had to get used to often common items being sold out, or really in short supply that were not part of the highly talked about things such as Toilet Paper and other Grocery Goods.
 I'd go into a Home Depot, and they were out of 90 min Durabond, but had 45 or 20 min versions in 'some' stock.
 Or the next week HD was over flowing with 90min Lightweight Drywall Compound, but not much in any of the versions of Durabond.
  Lumber prices, yeah, all over the place, when you could get what you wanted.
   There is a new house being built next door to us, the builder talked to us about his delay in getting Truss Assemblies out of Wisconsin , due to Covid there. So that put his time table for finishing the house clear into this Summer, months behind what they had originally planned on.

 On a different Tool Note, I was on-line at Grizzly's website this week, many items were on back order, the most I'd ever seen from them.

 AS far as Brexit and good out of the UK, I'm acutely aware of those headaches since I depend on the Brits to get us our Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles, parts, and support on a timely manner.  We here in the US all dreaded the long dragged out scope of Brexit, but never dreamed it would be a 1 /2 punch with a Global Pandemic added to it at the same time.

 2021 will be a long year all over again...
  At least I'm fully stocked on all my Festool Consumables....