plummet wrote:God you guys are so literal. It was just a theoretical calculation to show you how cost escalates. Even if you own the manufacturing facility it still costs more money per unit to make low volume product. Set up cost, r&d costs marketing costs.... all greater per unit on low volume stuff. Time to set up jigs etc...
Also and finally. The market dictates the price. If nobody purchased a $649 board then none would be for sale. Its basic business. Make it for as little as possible. Sell it for as much as possible
Please explain the Slingshot thing.
Same small facility in Washington State USA.
Same construction techniques and materials in their own little plant that has been doing it for three years or so.
Why are the kiteboard prices higher?
They made kiteboards before the made wakeboards and their production volumes are similar in both.
I believe the answer at Slingshot is that the expectation is that the wakeboard market is used to paying less and the kiteboard market is used to paying more.
Liquid Force should be paying a board manufacturing facility of their choice (in whatever country) the exact same price for wakeboards and kiteboards, negotiated at the same table in the same meetings.
A buddy of mine who has been kiting since a year after the original Maui crew, bought his first twintip picklefork from Jimmy Lewis about 18 years ago and it was an (too) expensive hand made board.
He bought a Mutant hand made from John Doyle that was $1200.
Those kinds of prices should have gone way down when we went to production twintips, made in a production facility, in some decent volume.
I really think this is about what the market will pay at retail.
We started out in the kite business, with kiters paying for Jimmy Lewis to build expensive twintips by hand and the price mentality has never changed.
But, it's just what I think and I could be wrong.