Re: Coronado delay
From: Martin Brown (|||newspam|||_at_nezumi.demon.co.uk)
Date: 10/12/04
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Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 08:42:01 +0100
In message <ckesia$dhm$1@reader10.wxs.nl>, Steve Maddison
<steve@cosam.org> writes
>Martin Frey wrote:
>> rander3127 <rander3127@rogers.com> wrote:
>>> What your countries are doing is maintaining trade barriers and
>>>artificially protecting home-based retail sellers.
The country is not doing anything like that. European dealers are
effectively managing their business to not to be over competitive. The
US has gone the other way to a situation of extremely cut throat dumb
box shifters where you are lucky if a dealers product knowledge extends
beyond the box dimensions and shipping weight.
>> Meade and Celestron have one importer each in the UK - all other
>>dealers must buy from that importer. That's a decision of Meade and
>>Celestron - not the queue of dealers who whould love to get importing
Meade & Celestron have done a good job. Their product is worth whatever
people will pay for it. We destroyed most of our UK domestic telescope
producers some while ago by preferring imported kit, and now have the
temerity to complain that there is not enough price competition!
Japan still has a healthy competitive astronomy market since it has
plenty of domestic competition from Borg, Fujinon, Pentax, Takahashi,
Vixen. And a bunch of smaller specialist players.
>>> Lastly, ignore the prohibitions put on sellers by the likes of
>>>Meade and Celestron so a retailer in the U.S. is prevented from
>>>shipping to other countries, most will ship under certain
>>>circumstances. Those private prohibitions are probably not even legal.
They are for a contract made between companies where manufacture of the
goods took place outside the EEC. The big fights have actually been
between European supermarkets and US branded clothing manufacturers. The
quid pro quo is we (EEC) get to rip US women off for couture, perfume &
cosmetics.
>> What has been particularly infuriating is to watch the dollar go
>>south and UK prices remain unchanged. A high proportion of the
>>revenue generated by these artificial prices has been spent on
>>massive saturation advertising.
You can't blame them for that. Keep demand high and you can maximise
profits - standard rules of supply and demand apply.
>
>I think you've summed it all up very nicely, but what can we do about
>it? I have the feeling that complaints to any of the offending parties
>would unfortunately fall on deaf ears. The importers are happy making
>their profits and the manufacturers are happy selling less scopes for
>more cash.
Their duty is to maximise returns to their shareholders. Nothing else.
Do you really believe that Nike trainers and other "designer" branded
goods are sold for reasonable prices? It is all in the public valuation
of a product brand.
>
>I don't see any kind of boycott having much effect either; the fact is
>that there's demand enough for these products and many consumers (myself
>included), although not exactly willing, are prepared to pay the price
>in order to avoid any hassle or nasty surprises arising from buying abroad.
You could still chose alternative products if you hadn't been suckered
by the saturation level M-C advertising. Some good Japanese kit is
actually competitively priced in Europe and there is also Orion
Optics(UK).
You could also buy second hand to avoid the premium pricing. There are a
fair number of M-C scopes languishing in cupboards and offered for sale
in the pages of Astronomy Now and other places.
>
>> The hope is that this hegemony be broken by China.
>
>There is already some encouraging news on that front. I've seen Orion 80
>ED OTAs for sale here for EUR 499, not far off the $499 common in the US.
The European cost structures are different as are the sales volumes. You
cannot reasonably expect the same prices as in the USA and still have a
viable public health system and welfare state.
Regards,
-- Martin Brown
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