Sourcing equipment locally is its own skill, and an expensive one to learn by mistake. Some of what we have learned, offered so you do not have to repeat it.
**Counterfeits are the default assumption**
Major tool brands are counterfeited comprehensively, and the fakes have improved. Packaging, holograms and serial numbers are all reproduced. Price is your best signal: a well-known angle grinder at a third of its usual price is not a bargain, it is a different product wearing the same name.
The practical failure mode is not that a fake tool works badly. It is that it works fine for six weeks and then fails under load, which with a grinder or a chuck is a safety event.
**Buy the boring brand**
Unglamorous industrial brands are counterfeited less because there is less margin in it. They are usually better value anyway. We would rather run a mid-range machine that parts are available for than a premium one nobody can service.
**Spares before specification**
Before buying any machine, find out where the consumables come from and what they cost landed. A printer with a proprietary nozzle, a laser with an unusual tube size, a saw with a non-standard blade arbor — each of these turns an ordinary maintenance job into a two-month import.
We have declined better machines on this basis alone and never regretted it.
**Voltage and power quality**
Check the input specification against what actually arrives at your wall, not what is supposed to. Equipment rated for stable 220V does not always survive local supply. Voltage stabilisers and a proper earth are not accessories.
**Buy in person where you can**
For anything significant, see it running before money changes hands. Power it up. Listen to it. If a seller will not demonstrate a machine, that is the answer.
**Ask us**
We keep informal notes on suppliers who have been reliable and ones who have not. If you are buying for a space or a workshop, get in touch — we would rather share what we know than watch someone repeat an expensive mistake.