Confused about mountain bike prices???

larkim

Selling prices are up to the retailer - if you were selling, you'd set your prices based on supply and demand, and not necessarily in relation to the costs of the goods from the manufacturer (plus import duties, etc etc).

The margin over the ex-factory costs is what the retailer has to use to pay salaries, overheads, etc and then take out as his profit margin. If retailer in CountryA was selling in a country with no minimum wage, no employment taxes, no requirements for employee insurance, low property rentals and low utilities costs he would charge less for the same product than a retailer in CountryB which had to suck up all of those costs before he could take out his own profit.

So there's no god given right for prices across different countries to be equalised, nor should there necessarily be a correlation between the ex-factory prices of the goods being sold and the sales price at the retailer.

Especially with the current internet-purchasing age, its up to consumers to find better deals, taking into account factors such as statutory warranty periods, ease of customer service access etc etc.

In essence, quite moaning about different prices - its not fair, not intended to be fair, and is just commercial good sense on the part of the retailers.

paulbox

I'd say there are a couple of issues.

State taxes - Applied at point of sale and not included in the prices quoted, vary from state to state and are over and above their equivalent to VAT.

As somebody else mentioned, price point is key. We do see Santa Cruz as a premium brand because they are expensive. When I studied economics there was a case study on Turtle Wax (or somebody like that). They were launching in the US and they priced at an equivalent to their UK prices. They bombed, nobody was buying, so they pulled out. A couple of years later they got some advice and relaunched, they almost tripled their prices for the relaunch and were very successful. The reason for the original problem was that car wax at the time was expensive in the US, people therefore assumed that their products must be crap because were so cheap.

PS. You can get a lot more than 500 Nomad frames in a shipping container.