How to calculate a price for the Pyra

[rygD]

By the way, I am glad Ithic.com, and maybe ThinkGeek and others, will be there to provide Pyras to North America.

 

Whats the problem for sending it from Germany to USA? 

I just looked from Austria (Im living here; its near Germany) to USA and it will cost ~25Euros. Not that much. Needs about 10-15days. 

Or are there other problems with export? 

Sometimes bad stuff happens.  It seems to happen more frequently when packages go over oceans (at least for me).

I am sure others also prefer not to pay more for shipping which takes longer, wait however long it takes for customs to kick it out the other side, and risk of it getting lost or damaged.  Also, some people have credit with Ithic from the icontrolpad2.

My Pyra will be coming from ED since I already have a voucher for a few hundred euros.

What's the problem with people being able to buy from a seller on their continent?

 

[comradekingu]

Spoiler

Producing these things cost a lot, they cant just be printed. It doesn't make sense to give units to thinkgeek or other resellers that cut into the profit margin considerably without any of the risk of production.

Increased price and/or region-prizing just sucks.

If you make contracts to resellers its to get money flowing in beforehand, but its also means you have to deliver at the date. I preordered the GCW-ZERO, and thinkgeek were selling units long long before i got mine.

There is nothing a reseller can do better, preorders, resale, sale.

There is especially nothing that ED doesn't do better himself. (Including calculations)

Ideally we all chip in now with donations, ourselves, which leads to better prices for us, the community, down the road.

Then we offer funds up as preorders for producible products for the actual production.

 

[EvilDragon]

There are various reasons to have distributors.

1. A lot of people are scared to order outside of their country. Yes, that's still the case. If the device is broken, they can return it more easily, etc.

2. A distributor wants to SELL the products he has. Therefore, he does advertisement. Advertisement that doesn't cost us anything additional.

3. Distributors like ThinkGeek have thousands of users, a lot of them potential Pyra customers. One newsletter from them could increase the sales a lot - more free advertisement and more units sold.

4. Distributors save more costs: In Europe, for example, I have to register now in every country every single product I sell, each one with costs involved. Just to be able to sell the Pyra wihthin all countries of the European Union would cost me more than 10,000 EUR. If I got a distributor in that specific country, I don't have to register there or pay anything for the registration. Problem solved.

5. International letters don't allow to have LiPo batteries included anymore. The cheapest shipping costs I can offer to US, Japan or Canada for the Pyra is via UPS and costs more than 60 EUR additionally. Shipping costs are way cheaper with a local distributor.

So, the advantages for me would be:

* A lot more sales

* Free advertisement

* Easier handling (shipping a box with 200 Pyras to one distributor is easier than packaging 200 Pyras for end customers)

* Less hassles with the legal stuff of the local country

The advantage for the customer would be:

* Way cheaper and faster shipping

* Better support (in case the unit is defective)

* Payment in their local currency

So yes, the distributors would get profit, but they also have costs for warranty replacements, general support, warehouse storage, advertisement, product handling, etc.

There's a reason most manufacturers sell through distributors and not themselves, you know

I'd rather sell 8000 units via ThinkGeek than 1000 without any distributors. That would give me more profit and would put more Pyras out in the wild.

Both is good, even though Thinkgeek gets their share as well.

 

[cinaeco]

So, then send me 100 Euro if you have enough. No? I knew that. 


And I also dont want to pay 100 Euro extra just because that Thinkgeek is not angry about Ed because he sells the Pyra under their price.

Er... that really wasn't the point. Since you evidently see the value of the device AND your desire for a particular price is unrealistic, I'm just encouraging you that you could always rearrange your finances responsibly to come up with the funds, rather than ranting. Budgeting/planning for a future of having this device is more productive. I'm not passing you money I've saved for myself, saving your own money is your job.

 

[fusion_power]

Interesting, I really thought it's better without distributors, especialy when all Pyras are so or so built here and have to be shipped anyways around the world.

I'd rather sell 8000 units via ThinkGeek than 1000 without any distributors. That would give me more profit and would put more Pyras out in the wild.

Both is good, even though Thinkgeek gets their share as well.

The question is: can you handle it? Even with a distributor, at the end someone has to build all the Pandoras, order parts etc... is the Company be able to produce alot ot Pyras when a big player like Think Geek orders such a bunch at once?I mean, you teached us about "lead times", we learned that even the (compared) small batches of Pandora took ages to make, parts are suddenly not produced anymore, etc... I see hopes that higher batches can even make the Pyra cheaper at the end. But again, it first have to be BUILT (and shipped). Imagine, someone orders 10K Pyras, what would you do? ^^"

 

[Exophase]

I see this as all being very hypothetical.

Has the community been polled to determine how many would be unwilling to order outside of their country? Even knowing that if their device is broken it'll probably need to be sent back all the way anyway, only increasing the wait time by sending it through a middleman? Are the sorts of distributors that would actually stock Pyra the type that have advertising budgets? Are ones as large as ThinkGeek really committed to stocking it? Is the Pyra really going to be a big attractor on sites like that?

These things are not a given at all, IMO. I am very, very skeptical that having it on ThinkGeek would multiply the sales several times. And ThinkGeek is certainly not going to repair anyone's Pyra. And I doubt they'd include ads that specifically showcase the Pyra. There'd be ThinkGeek ads, but the device itself will be relatively buried on their site.

Shipping costs may be a lot cheaper from the distributor to the buyer but that doesn't account for shipping costs from the manufacturer to distributor. Of course some amount is saved in bulk there, but not all of it. Is the idea that the distributor will pick up the LiPo batteries from somewhere else to avoid the cost?

I expect that most of the distributors will be small players, because those are the ones interested in something small volume like Pyra (still want to see that ThinkGeek has actually said they're committed to selling it). In turn they'll only be able to commit to maybe a few dozen units to a hundred or so at because of the very large investment behind the order. Maybe that's still enough to make an enormous difference in economy of scale, I don't know.

Pandora had some distributors. Did it have any ads? What percentage bought through them?

 

[onthebridge]

Does anyone know how many Pandoras have been sold in total?

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Does anyone know how many Pandoras have been sold in total?

Perhaps somewhat less then 4,000 ifirc.

 

[WizardStan]

4000 was the original number. It's probably more like 8000 at this point though I wouldn't hazard to guess much more than that.

 

[Exophase]

I think the shipping concerns seem like the most salient arguments (particularly in light of the inability to ship individual batteries cheaply), in which case I'd recommend looking into dropship distributors which are probably cheaper than a reseller/retailer would be.

I imagine you could even find a fair number of people in the community willing to distribute bulk units in their home country for cheap or even free, provided of course that they don't have to resell the units.

 

[Natsu]

Idk what you should do, tbh. Anything you can do to make it cheaper would be nice.

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

Not that anyone else likely cares, but I refuse to buy ANYTHING from thinkgeek, most(all?) of the "fine, high-quality" :rolleyes: products they sell are shockingly overpriced (for the item itself and/or "shipping and handling fees"<-- ok, this part wouldn't apply to the Pyra, but does for many of the things they sell). If I'm to be made to pay inflated costs/fees to purchase a thing, I'd FAR prefer to buy directly from ED. Allll the wayyyy over In Germany. At least then, the increased costs would be justified. I really hope ED doesn't force me to make a "hard choice".

p.s. if we, in the u.s., happen to live in the same state as a thinkgeek warehouse, then, BAM! sales tax time! (I assume it works the same as it does with something like amazon.com)

p.p.s. more on actual topic... do you think we might be able to get Traylorpark, the one who designed the boxart for the Pandoras sold in Japan, to do the box for the Pyra?(those looked really nice, I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for that kind of thing for the Pyra)

 

[Natsu]

Looks like the problem is more on thinkgeek. Maybe a different seller?

Not as a "different seller", but are Ebay and Amazon an option?

 

[_wb_]

4000 was the original number. It's probably more like 8000 at this point though I wouldn't hazard to guess much more than that.

I think the total number of Pandora's shipped should be about 6500.

 

[_jr_]

I think the shipping concerns seem like the most salient arguments (particularly in light of the inability to ship individual batteries cheaply), in which case I'd recommend looking into dropship distributors which are probably cheaper than a reseller/retailer would be.


I imagine you could even find a fair number of people in the community willing to distribute bulk units in their home country for cheap or even free, provided of course that they don't have to resell the units.

I think that all of ED's point are quite relevant *if* a reseller manages to move a significant number of Pyras. And if no reseller can be found or none of them is successful, nothing is lost either: ED cannot share any of the work (and depending on the success will have to hire additional help), but the higher markup should account for that. So I see no general problem, but ED providing a business scenario allowing resellers, that can work without them just as well. Whether it is sound depends on whether ED's calculation is correct. I have no clue about that and am just blindly trusting him here. After all that is what he's been doing reasonably successful for quite a long time already.


Anyway I don't see how a business model without resellers could lead to a cheaper Pyra without impacting ED's profit.

 

[Neelix]

Even if we don't end up getting ThinkGeek on board,  there will be other resellers, like Link and possibly Ekianjo, so ED's business plan definitely needs to take them into account.

-Neelix

 

[_wb_]

I think the shipping concerns seem like the most salient arguments (particularly in light of the inability to ship individual batteries cheaply), in which case I'd recommend looking into dropship distributors which are probably cheaper than a reseller/retailer would be.


I imagine you could even find a fair number of people in the community willing to distribute bulk units in their home country for cheap or even free, provided of course that they don't have to resell the units.

I live in Brussels, Belgium.

I wouldn't mind receiving and safely storing a bulk box of Pyras (say 100 of them), and sending them to individual Belgian customers, as long as I get the remaining shipping fee I have to pay myself reimbursed by ED.

Though most likely shipping from Belgium to Belgium is going to be roughly exactly as expensive as shipping from Germany to Belgium, so I don't think it would make much of a difference. Also, there could very well be legal issues, because if this means I have to become a "Belgian reseller company" then I guess there's lots of paperwork involved, and perhaps the end-customer would have to pay the 21% Belgian VAT instead of the 19% German VAT.

So the above plan is probably a bad idea for the case of Belgium, but it could be a good idea for other countries (farther away from Germany).

There's one thing that still could make sense, in order to minimize shipping/handling costs: if there are any other Belgians on these boards who want to buy a Pyra, we could buy them together, ship them to my house (with a combined shipping costs that is probably lower than the sum of the individual shipping costs would have been -- if necessary I can make a little trip to Ingolstadt), and then the others can come and get them whenever they are in the neighborhood. We're a small country, and I live basically right next to its biggest railway station (Brussels-Midi), so chances are that people are often in my neighborhood -- and I wouldn't mind meeting Pyra community members

 

[Alperoot]

So why not create some topics named as all the countries in the world? (Jk) I like that idea.

 

[rygD]

 

I see this as all being very hypothetical.

Has the community been polled to determine how many would be unwilling to order outside of their country? Even knowing that if their device is broken it'll probably need to be sent back all the way anyway, only increasing the wait time by sending it through a middleman? Are the sorts of distributors that would actually stock Pyra the type that have advertising budgets? Are ones as large as ThinkGeek really committed to stocking it? Is the Pyra really going to be a big attractor on sites like that?

These things are not a given at all, IMO. I am very, very skeptical that having it on ThinkGeek would multiply the sales several times. And ThinkGeek is certainly not going to repair anyone's Pyra. And I doubt they'd include ads that specifically showcase the Pyra. There'd be ThinkGeek ads, but the device itself will be relatively buried on their site.

Shipping costs may be a lot cheaper from the distributor to the buyer but that doesn't account for shipping costs from the manufacturer to distributor. Of course some amount is saved in bulk there, but not all of it. Is the idea that the distributor will pick up the LiPo batteries from somewhere else to avoid the cost?

I expect that most of the distributors will be small players, because those are the ones interested in something small volume like Pyra (still want to see that ThinkGeek has actually said they're committed to selling it). In turn they'll only be able to commit to maybe a few dozen units to a hundred or so at because of the very large investment behind the order. Maybe that's still enough to make an enormous difference in economy of scale, I don't know.

Pandora had some distributors. Did it have any ads? What percentage bought through them?

ThinkGeek has other pricey things on their site.  The other day when I was checking the items on sale a few of those were in the hundreds of dollars.  Although they seem to have gone for more mainstream in recent years, they still have a lot of niche products.  I think that is part of what some customers expect, interesting things they don't see everywhere else.  Wasn't the icotrolpad sold by thinkgeek?  I don't see a problem with ED keeping them in mind when the time comes.

Not that anyone else likely cares, but I refuse to buy ANYTHING from thinkgeek, most(all?) of the "fine, high-quality"  :rolleyes:  products they sell are shockingly overpriced (for the item itself and/or "shipping and handling fees"<-- ok, this part wouldn't apply to the Pyra, but does for many of the things they sell). If I'm to be made to pay inflated costs/fees to purchase a thing, I'd FAR prefer to buy directly from ED. Allll the wayyyy over In Germany. At least then, the increased costs would be justified. I really hope ED doesn't force me to make a "hard choice".

p.s. if we, in the u.s., happen to live in the same state as a thinkgeek warehouse, then, BAM! sales tax time!   (I assume it works the same as it does with something like amazon.com)

p.p.s. more on actual topic... do you think we might be able to get Traylorpark, the one who designed the boxart for the Pandoras sold in Japan, to do the box for the Pyra?(those looked really nice, I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for that kind of thing for the Pyra)

Paying more at ThinkGeek is sometimes the case, but I don't think it is as bad as you make it seem.  I have purchased some things from them because it was cheaper than elsewhere, especially if I would need to import.  Having the Pyra sold by ThinkGeek isn't really for us, it is for the people that don't already know about it (although if they still do their little reward program it might be worth it).  I would like to already have mine before ED approaches ThinkGeek with them.

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

^ huh.. well I'm willing to concede that may be the case.. perhaps I've just been looking for the wrong things at the wrong times from them..? still, I hope I can buy my Pyra from somewhere besides thinkgeek..

maybe it's just me, but thinkgeek always sort-of struck me as someplace that was trying to make people think it was cooler(smarter?) than what it really is..it ends up feeling a little bit annoying..