Good Time to Buy Japanese Tools

[Bob Deroeck]

The market closed today at 102 yen to the US Dollar. The dollar has appreciated about 33% since last September. It's a good time to be ordering Japanese tools.

Bob

[Rick Fisher]

Have prices fallen from the Domestic suppliers ? I checked iida tools .. no change.. they are in USD ..

[Eddie Darby]

Japan has taken a page from China's book, and is artificially keeping the Yen low to bring investment into Japan.

United States puts Japan on notice in currency report

[Paul Saffold]

"Tools from Japan" (dot com) prices change daily depending on the exchange rate. Other considerations are the shipping cost and time. Most significant to many when dealing with a dealer in Japan is the ability to purchase individually handcrafted tools not offered by other retailers at a very reasonable price, especially now.

[Chris Griggs]

Yes, great time to buy Japanese tools! If like Paul said you get them from a place where the prices change depending on the exchange rate. Stuff at us stores has stayed the same, but the stuff on Stu's website (toolsfromjapan.com) is dramatically lower in USD than it was a year ago.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I would think it's less Stu's changing his price with the exchange rate, and more that Stu is charging you in Yen, because he's in Japan and that's what he uses. The calculator he rolls into the website just makes it easier for us who care about what the price is in something other than Yen, because we live somewhere else. I would imagine there are other places one could order Japanese tools from, in Yen, and receive a similar price break, but I can't recall seeing any others as easy to deal with as TFJ.

I wouldn't expect Hida or Japan Woodworker or any of the other dealers to drop their prices immediately - everything in their store, they most likely brought over here when the Yen was higher. How much higher, I don't know.

What will be interesting will be whether their prices drop as time goes on, or if they just look at it as extra profit margin. I think many folks who don't pay attention to the same silliness we do just have it in their mind what the price of a certain thing is, and aren't going to feel like they're paying too much.

The extra sales by lowering the price to coincide more with the exchange rate would be nice for a reseller stateside, (and if they could maximize their stock while the price was cheap, they could possibly hang onto that price longer than a reseller who didn't have as much stock, if the Yen goes up again) but there's probably a lot of folk wary of doing that - if the price of Yen climbs alot, and you've put a new, lower price point into the heads of your consumers, it can be tough on sales or the bottom line if you're forced to raise the price or eat some of the markup to keep prices at the same point. I know of a few places that felt the pinch last time the Yen climbed up, and are probably still thinking of that in the back of their mind.

I wouldn't be surprised if some other places stateside had some "sales" to take advantage of the exchange difference without making it seem like a regular price point.

[David Weaver]

If the yen stays down, they will probably stay static or slightly reduce their prices. To be fair for them, when the yen first dropped, they sold a lot of their stock at out of date prices, but the increase after that was stiff.

If you want to speculate based on the currency, stu is the way to go.

[Chris Griggs]

What will be interesting will be whether their prices drop as time goes on, or if they just look at it as extra profit margin. I think many folks who don't pay attention to the same silliness we do just have it in their mind what the price of a certain thing is, and aren't going to feel like they're paying too much.

It will be interesting to see. Having someone like Stu out there who is selling in Yen creates some competition that might make them lowering their prices more likely....then again for a place like WC (who now opens japan-woodworker) Stu might be a pretty small fish.

I bet your right that rather than prices going down they'll just start having "sales" periodically on japanese tools.

I would hope a smaller place like Hida would lower there prices once their stock turns over though.

[Sam Takeuchi]

I hope it won't hurt the specialty Japanese tool retailers though. Moving inventory stocked during high yen period would be difficult without making less revenue or even at loss. Something like WC can take a bit of sting, but when your main ware is all affected, it's gotta be pretty rough.

The high yen of the past couple of years has been abnormal, rather than the norm. Market is what market demands, but there was nothing usual about yen floating between 76 to 90 yen to the dollar. 100 to 120 yen to the dollar has been somewhat of norm for the past couple decades and I guess it's where people over here and over there are content about each other's currency value. I don't think it'll move too much more from here at least for now. Where people have to live on imported food items and natural resources, going far to the other way isn't going to make things easier either.