Build Quality

[mikel]

19 hours ago, neepheid said:

I'm finding this rather argumentative - who said there was anything wrong with it?  I do take issue with your added point to the post I initially replied to - "Pay a bit extra to buy from a shop and save the cost of a setup."  So seeing as you brought up how cost effective buying from a shop is, let's see how it tallies up.  Travelling down and back to Edinburgh or Glasgow from Aberdeen is at least £40 - be it a tank of fuel or public transport.  Never mind your proposed long weekend and the costs that would incur, let's do it in a day (let's face it, you can do the main stops worth visiting in Glasgow - Kenny's, Guitar Guitar and Merchant City - in a day easily).  That'll be the whole day - as I'll be spending a minimum of 5 hours travelling.

It also depends what you're buying.  If I was going to buy a £1000+ bass then I might make the trip - make it a road trip for the ceremony of it more than anything else.  But for a £300 bass (which is what the bass I most recently bought cost)?  Forget it.

Did I mention that I do my own setups?  They cost me nothing, save for 20-30 mins of spare time.

It was a joke, did the tone of my post not suggest that? Who doesn't like sitting in a music shop all day given the choice of a good one? I was not arguing with you.

[neepheid]

10 hours ago, mikel said:

It was a joke, did the tone of my post not suggest that? Who doesn't like sitting in a music shop all day given the choice of a good one? I was not arguing with you.

Well, that's how it came across to me but I'm happy to have got it wrong.

[spacecowboy]

So if we took the company I work for, which designs and manufacturers products and sells them through direct to consumer channels and 3rd party retailers; 

The product cost you - £390

The retailer takes 50% of product value so it cost them - £195 to purchase from the manufacturer

The manufacturer takes 50% of product value so it cost them - £97.50 to make

£97.50 generally covers parts, labour, overheads, and you'd do the same cycle for all the parts that make up the guitar, i.e pickups, someone makes the pickups, sells to a retailer, bought by your guitar maker. £97.50 isn't going to get you too much especially in the QC department. 

The consumer in every market is always shafted by the final RRP, we pay the upward cost for everything, which is why I'm always skeptical about 10% off sales, that's 10% off RRP which was inflated by 50% by the retailer in the first place, so imagine a product at £390 reduced by 10% now costs you £351, bargain right? well no not really, the guitar is still only £97.50 to make, the retailer still pays £195.00 for the product, They sell it with a 10% discount for £351, the retailer is taking the hurt, but they're still turning profit, that 10% might have attracted a 25% uplift in sales negating the 10% drop hurt anyway.

This is a very loose general overview and every retailer / manufacturer has different margins, we have some products that retail to consumers for £5.00 that cost us 0.01p to make so work out the value uplift on that if you can stomach it! There's very little real value anywhere.

[Dad3353]

5 hours ago, spacecowboy said:

So if we took the company I work for ...

Those are very 'broad brush' figures, and are doubtless true (or even understated...) for some products or markets (a Picasso sketch, anyone..?), but the spread is far wider, I'd suggest. I ran a retail TV sales/repair shop for a few years, and margins were much tighter there than those quoted above; despite this, the big stores were undercutting to almost my wholesale price, so their margins were lower than mine, despite their higher overheads. I was involved in the manufacture of pool tables; there, too, margins were tight and competition fierce. I spent some years in a music shop; not much gold being dug there, either, and 10% off was a serious cut in profit, not easily given away. It's true that there are some commerces that have artificially high RRP so as to offer stupid 50% cuts, but they're specific, and not a generality, I'd say.
Just sayin'. 

Edited June 21, 2021 by Dad3353

[Downunderwonder]

On 20/06/2021 at 06:59, Acebassmusic said:

Just to put these distances in context....it's like saying to someone who lives in London to go check out the music shops in Birmingham. We in Aberdeen don't live at the ar$e end of the universe.......but we're close to it! 🤣🤣

When I lived in the UK I had yet to set foot in Australia.  ''Wot, you never been to Australia!??" ''Yeah, ever been to Russia?''. Same distance, not like popping over to Paris for lunch.