Import professional tools and hardware
from Europe to the United States

Germany is the centre of gravity and it is not close. Bosch Professional, Festool, Metabo, Fein, Knipex, Wera, Wiha, Hazet, Stahlwille, Gedore and Würth all run their deepest catalogues at home, and the trade suppliers that carry them — Contorion, SVH24, Hoffmann Group, Würth's own channel — price for professionals rather than for a foreign distributor's margin. Italy is the second pillar, mostly for hand tools and workshop equipment: Beta Utensili and USAG are the reference names, with a service and accessory ecosystem that rarely crosses borders intact. Spain contributes cutting and striking tools with a long industrial history — Bellota, Irega, Egamaster, Palmera — and the Czech Republic adds Narex, whose chisels and woodworking tools have a following far bigger than their distribution.

For a business the practical question is not which brand but which format. Hand tools, measuring instruments, bits and accessory systems are the ideal repeat purchase: dense, durable, unaffected by mains voltage, and easy to consolidate from several suppliers into one shipment. Corded power tools are where you need to stop and read the operations section below before ordering anything. And if you are stocking a workshop rather than reselling, the European trade catalogues are usually where the specialist references live — the sizes and variants a local distributor decided were not worth listing.

Start with the change that reset the arithmetic: the $800 de minimis exemption was suspended on 29 August 2025, so a shipment from Europe can attract duty from the first dollar. For a business that is not only a cost — it is a reason to change how you ship. When each consignment is a customs event, sending ten small parcels a month costs you ten sets of charges, while consolidating into one or two well-documented consignments spreads that overhead across the whole order.

The second thing to know is that the threshold conversation ends where commercial imports begin. Formal entry procedures and a customs bond come into play on commercial consignments above the informal-entry ceiling, and in practice most importers work with a licensed customs broker who files the entry, applies the HTS classification and posts the bond. That is your side of the border. Our side is making the entry easy to file: one consolidated shipment, a commercial invoice that matches what is in the box, a packing list, real weights and dimensions, and the supplier's origin documents. US tariff rates have been moving through 2026, so we deliberately do not print rate tables that would be stale next month — your broker prices the current rate against your HTS codes.

Three technical facts decide whether a tool order is a good idea, and we would rather you know them now than after the pallet lands. First, mains voltage. European corded tools are built for 230 V at 50 Hz. That is fine for the United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, the UAE and Chile, which run at or near the same voltage. It is a real problem for the United States, Canada, Mexico and Colombia, which run at 110–127 V: a 230 V corded saw will not work on a 120 V site without a transformer, and no amount of good freight pricing fixes that. Cordless platforms are usually the answer — the tool itself has no mains voltage, and many chargers are 100–240 V, though you should confirm per model rather than assume.

Second, lithium batteries. Cordless tool batteries are dangerous goods in air freight, with rules that vary by whether they are loose, packed with equipment or contained in equipment. Some can move under specific conditions, some cannot move by air at all, and the answer depends on the cell and the service. Ask us before you order batteries rather than after they arrive at the warehouse. Third, conformity marking: CE marking is a European conformity regime. Placing tools on your local market for resale may require local marking or certification — RCM in Australia, NOM in Mexico, INMETRO in Brazil, and the market expectations around UL/ETL listing in North America. We ship your goods and document them properly; local compliance for resale is your side of the line and worth checking before you commit to volume.