Flex were bought by a Chinese company specifically so they (the new owners) could offer Flex manufactured tools in the domestic market, re branded. As opposed to having to start from scratch with a quality product.
I visited the Flex factory in Germany 18 months ago to see the manufacturing and assembly process. A very high percentage of components are manufactured and assembled in house, in Germany, we actually saw it all happening.
Flex have had a problem with switches which is being addressed.
The cordless range Flex now offer is very high spec indeed, but it's such a difficult market to break into with Dewalt and Makita being clear brand leaders.
Festool and Flex are much bigger brands on the continent, it's their main market.
We're a distributor for Flex, mainly because they offer specialist tools for stone masonry that simply don't exist elsewhere. So we offer them along side our products more as a convenience to our customers.
The margins in powertools is laughable and we'd prefer not to be involved in them at all. The only way it makes sense for us is we stock low volume and unusual tools that are available for next day delivery. The availability allows us to charge more than the tool shops who tend to have to order in from Germany once the customer has placed an order.
Money no object, the best quality stone masonry tools available are manufactured by Galeski, but they are at a Hilti price point.
Galeski - Manufaktur innovativer Maschinen - http://galeski.net/index.php