Axminster pricing

[Droogs]

I use them a lot for all sorts of things, but they are just an online supplier for me. They may have bricks and mortar shops but none are near me nor even in my country. If they want my business then give me a price i am happy to pay, if not then adios amigo. They said no to giving someone a price matchprobably knowing full well from his purchasing history that he would buy from them anyway. Where is the loyalty to the customer in that. All these companies may have started out with a genuinely good customer service and loyalty ethos but as they grow the bottom line takes over and that is it.

 

[Tasky]

Except for the development costs, servers, technicians, running costs, data centres, warehouses, distribution networks, buying costs etc.

The first four bits of that can usually be had as a package deal for businesses.
But Axy have all the above in addition to their B&M shops, because a web presence is becoming pretty fundamental to large retail businesses these days.

But if a significant discount was on offer from a mail order and the high street store wouldn't / couldn't match it I would be buying mail order.

A lot of places that have shops and mail order tend to offer specific discounts on one of them, as in In Store Only prices... I assume Axy do this?

Sometimes customer service is worth paying a little bit more for.

Yup, like when you have to return a bandsaw that weighs 6 times what the dog does, that has to be lifted into a small hatchback car and driven over an hour away, on a mid-week workday that you need annual leave for..... or, in Axy's case, some bloke in a truck just picks it up one evening, while dropping off the replacement and gives you a set of extra saw blades for your trouble!!

Cheerio Axminster. You've got it wrong. When you start putting selfish profit margins on your prices, lots will be going “next door.”

Next door from my local Axy shop is a Hobbycraft..... Good luck finding anything there and, even if they do have it, I hope you've bought lube to go with their pricing!! :lol:

 

[Ali]

Sittingbourne is my local store and often there, so use Axminster a lot. It is expensive but what other real choice do you have at this price level? Forget power tools, they have never really been competitive in that area for me even when they attempted the price promise (now dropped) but for machinery, what other real choice do you have? D&M are a nice shop but for stationary machinery they only sell what limited range Record Power/Startrite do, otherwise there is Scheppach level of stuff. Beyond that price point is the Felder/Hammer level but that is another market altogether.

Just looking at some of the prices for the Ts200 in the old catalogue, in 2013 it was £240.95, 2014 it was £249.95, in 2015 it was slightly adapted to the TS200-2 (larger table size) with a price of £349.96 followed by today's price of £399.00 in 2018.

There have been considerable increases in the price of their fixed machinery, kitting out a (starter) workshop was never cheap, but is somewhere between 10-20% more from just looking over a sample of their prices in the last 5 years.

They have excellent staff though, very helpful and knowledgable. I guess such a level of customer service and running their business comes at a cost, a pity there isn't more competition for them.

 

[ScaredyCat]

If you have a local shop near you then I can see the attraction of going there but there's not a lot of difference between selling online and selling in a shop. You still need to have the stock if you sell online - unless you're using a drop ship service, but then you wont be getting distribution pricing, or even great reseller pricing. You still need to pay staff to process, pack and ship, provide support and advice and you can still offer good aftersales and RMA processing too. You still need to heat the building for staff, provide insurance etc. indeed the only thing you're not providing is a glitzy front end shop part.

If you don't provide these things then you're just box shifters, there's a market for that - some people just want the cheapest price possible.

We* use amazon as a sales channel for 2 very good reasons:

1) Customers can order and have something shipped at all times of the day or night - drunk ordering etc and with prime have it the next day.
2) Advertising. Customers who have purchased via amazon invariably order again, but direct from us.

There are downsides, amazon will accept returns on anything, in any state. Even if the customer has abused the product and/or painted it - you end up with stock that's unusable. They also take a nice chunk of change for the privilege of selling your stuff via them.

I've also seen Rutlands have stuff on amazon at higher prices than their own site.

*not axminster, we sell in an unrelated market

 

[Tasky]

in 2015 it was slightly adapted to the TS200-2 (larger table size) with a price of £349.96 followed by today's price of £399.00 in 2018.

That's nothing. Butter has gone up by 40% since Brexit was announced, they say...!!

I've also seen Rutlands have stuff on amazon at higher prices than their own site.

Interesting.
I buy PC components from shops that have both their own website and Amazon/eBay shops, where the latter is usually the better price.

 

[user 26031]

I think you may find many price increases imposed over the last 18 months or so are more likely due to:

• Price increases from the manufacturers in China. This is particularly true for machines.
• The big change in the GBP:USD exchange rate post EU referendum.
  Although the exchange rate is gradually improving in our favour, it takes months for any effects to filter through and that could well be outweighed by higher cost of the goods anyway.

I work in a different industry, but still importing goods mainly from China and now regularly see scary price increases (to my way of thinking at least).

My point is that UK suppliers can only absorb so much of the increase before passing it on to consumers. I think it's unfair to label it as greed.

(NOTE: I have no affiliation with Axi and it would help me if they brought prices down. I too spend more than I would like with them :? )

 

[shed9]

I think you may find many price increases imposed over the last 18 months or so are more likely due to:

• Price increases from the manufacturers in China. This is particularly true for machines.
• The big change in the GBP:USD exchange rate post EU referendum.
  Although the exchange rate is gradually improving in our favour, it takes months for any effects to filter through and that could well be outweighed by higher cost of the goods anyway.

I work in a different industry, but still importing goods mainly from China and now regularly see scary price increases (to my way of thinking at least).

My point is that UK suppliers can only absorb so much of the increase before passing it on to consumers. I think it's unfair to label it as greed.

(NOTE: I have no affiliation with Axi and it would help me if they brought prices down. I too spend more than I would like with them :? )

This has been Axminster's M.O. for a lot longer than 18 months.

Also, bear in mind that Axminster is just a branch of Brimarc, one finger in the pie. Again, I'm glad they exist just don't appreciate the price hikes and differences is all.

 

[Arnold9801]

I think you may find many price increases imposed over the last 18 months or so are more likely due to:

• Price increases from the manufacturers in China. This is particularly true for machines.
• The big change in the GBP:USD exchange rate post EU referendum.
  Although the exchange rate is gradually improving in our favour, it takes months for any effects to filter through and that could well be outweighed by higher cost of the goods anyway.

I work in a different industry, but still importing goods mainly from China and now regularly see scary price increases (to my way of thinking at least).

My point is that UK suppliers can only absorb so much of the increase before passing it on to consumers. I think it's unfair to label it as greed.

(NOTE: I have no affiliation with Axi and it would help me if they brought prices down. I too spend more than I would like with them :? )

Ok...you say this price hike is connected with the GBP:USD exchange rate. There is no doubt this will effect prices but like you also mentioned, this is coming around to suit ourselves as the exchange rate amends in our favour as far as buying foreign gooods is concerned.

My only challenge to that which supports my theory this is mainly “greed” is that even if the exchange rate changed so that it was fantastic for us to buy foreign/imported goods, they will still keep prices elevated and will not reduce them on the tools that were imported after a favourable exchange rate. The oil industry is a typical example of this as we all know. Slightest opportunity to elevate oil and they put it up. But you see how many times they drop oil prices and what’s more the drop is never as severe as the price hikes.

 

[Neil S]

Whenever I go into their shops they always seem so empty (of customers) for such a large shop footprint. This must be expensive to maintain.
I do however shop less there than I used to. Part of that is since they stopped producing the catalogue. I used to browse that catalogue whenever bored and always found something new I'd like. You can't thumb through a website as easily as a catalogue even on a tablet.
The PDF catalogue was a very poor replacement I only ever downloaded it once.

-Neil

 

[ScaredyCat]

Ok...you say this price hike is connected with the GBP:USD exchange rate. There is no doubt this will effect prices but like you also mentioned, this is coming around to suit ourselves as the exchange rate amends in our favour as far as buying foreign gooods is concerned.

The exchange rate might be changing in our favour now, but it's not about that, it's about what the exchange rate was when Axminster purchased their stock. We have similar issues, often we'll air freight stuff in that's difficult to get hold of, just so we have some stock. Prices are higher on those items because they cost us more to get in - that's before we even consider currency fluctuations. When we bring container loads in it can often be worse, it's floating about in the sea for 5 weeks - 5 weeks is a long time and currencies fluctuate, sometimes in our favour, most of the time not. We update our prices monthy to reflect what we pay as currencies fluctuate, but we're an IT company, we wrote our own shop software we built it so we could do it easily.

It's not just about greed, Axminster will have to buy more stock if the exchange rate is not in our favour then it costs more. I have no idea what distibution pricing is like in the wood machineary world but I know, as a distributor of networking kit, the margin on a lot of stuff really isn't that high.

 

[Bodgers]

They also sell stuff that just can't be had cheaper anywhere. The TS200 is a good example of this - it is THE cheapest cast iron topped, induction motored table saw for sale in Europe for example.

The TS200 has doubled in price in about six years.





Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

Yes, but its still the cheapest of its type - where can you find cheaper with the same or better spec?

 

[shed9]

They also sell stuff that just can't be had cheaper anywhere. The TS200 is a good example of this - it is THE cheapest cast iron topped, induction motored table saw for sale in Europe for example.

The TS200 has doubled in price in about six years.





Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

Yes, but its still the cheapest of its type - where can you find cheaper with the same or better spec?

How about this; https://www.ffx.co.uk/tools/product/Dra ... BMQAvD_BwE

Or this package; http://www.dm-tools.co.uk/product.php/s ... motvrxl9dg which is the full kit equivalent at £117 cheaper than the TS200 version.

Admittedly, the basic one is a wapping £1 more. There will be slight differences and not to detract from the mighty TS200 but it shows it's not the lone wolf everyone shouts about.

 

[Bodgers]

They also sell stuff that just can't be had cheaper anywhere. The TS200 is a good example of this - it is THE cheapest cast iron topped, induction motored table saw for sale in Europe for example.

The TS200 has doubled in price in about six years.





Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

Yes, but its still the cheapest of its type - where can you find cheaper with the same or better spec?

How about this; https://www.ffx.co.uk/tools/product/Dra ... BMQAvD_BwE

Or this package; http://www.dm-tools.co.uk/product.php/s ... motvrxl9dg which is the full kit equivalent at £117 cheaper than the TS200 version.

Admittedly, the basic one is a wapping £1 more. There will be slight differences and not to detract from the mighty TS200 but it shows it's not the lone wolf everyone shouts about.

The top one is £3 more expensive that the TS200 and doesn't have the benefit of new fence that the Axy does. Which is a big improvement.

And that's without the Axminster after sales....



Sent from my MI 3W using Tapatalk

 

[shed9]

And that's without the Axminster after sales....

And that's assuming FFX and DM Tools have none to be fair.

I've used all three and can honestly say there is little difference between them, certainly not enough to warrant unquestionable devotional access to my bank account.

 

[Bodgers]

And that's without the Axminster after sales....

And that's assuming FFX and DM Tools have none to be fair.

I've used all three and can honestly say there is little difference between them, certainly not enough to warrant unquestionable devotional access to my bank account.

Fair enough. Ultimately, it is your choice, they aren't robbing anyone's bank. Customers vote, and Axminster is still in business, so they must be doing something right...

 

[shed9]

And that's without the Axminster after sales....

And that's assuming FFX and DM Tools have none to be fair.

I've used all three and can honestly say there is little difference between them, certainly not enough to warrant unquestionable devotional access to my bank account.

Fair enough. Ultimately, it is your choice, they aren't robbing anyone's bank. Customers vote, and Axminster is still in business, so they must be doing something right...

Not suggesting they are robbing anyone's account, my comment was in response to those that suggest Axminster deserve purchase loyalty because they offer customer care over other retailers who are actually selling the same product. The original point to the thread was the excessive pricing to which there has been subsequent arguments for Axminster regardless of competitive pricing - this it appears is clearly subjective to the individual but in reality depends on how far those individuals spread their spend.

Yes Axminster are still in business and they must be doing something right, I've mentioned many times on this thread that I'm glad they are there and I hope they stay. This doesn't negate the original point that they charge more for the same things with quite possibly the same service as their competitors.

 

[tomatwark]

I used to spend several thousand a year with Axminster, since they have started to open shops they seem to have lost the way some what.

The common things we used to buy like Titebond and things like this they never seem to have stock, which means I buy alternatives.

Also they were the go to power tool suppliers, but as others have said more often than not they are a lot more expensive.

As for the industrial bits they don't carry spares and always quote 6-8 weeks delivery, this even applies to things like knives for their cutter blocks.

In 2017 I probably spend less than £200 with them.

A company who have lost the way, (Anyone remember Tabwell Tools and what happened to them?)