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Originally Posted by massless
This reply is growing rather long
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I quite enjoyed the level of detail in your answer. Thank you for that.
Unless a moderator, or you yourself object to it, I'd like to keep the discussion here public since some of these concerns have been voiced, more or less directly, in the comments in NwAvGuys blog too. So it might be of a general interest.
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Originally Posted by massless
As for product quality, I will admit that we're not the cheapest manufacturer out there.
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That's not what I'm looking for either, but I'm still trying to put things into perspective - when looking at the price difference for an assembled and a bare-board ODAC, there's enough room in there to fit FiiO's E5 twice. So I hope it's somewhat understandable that the first thought was that there's something off here .. or that maybe there would have been smarter approaches to this issue.
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Originally Posted by massless
Yes, here's a partial list (not all have websites): Distributors |
Ok, clearly I didn't look closely enough at your site, sorry for that. Still only one of them actually offers the O2 as far as I can tell. At a significant mark-up.
And my guess is that the many other offline-retailers won't be having an issue with the online price either. It's not like the O2/ODAC is the only product they carry that will actually be cheaper available online than in their store. And they do still manage to find customers willing to pay the asking price (since, as I said in my last post, and as the article you linked to confirms, the customers are to some extent actually getting added value in return), so they are clearly catering to a different clientele than you are in your online-store.
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Originally Posted by massless
Check out this recent interview with "Bunny" from Chumby. He addresses the business hurdles a company like ours faces, without being vague. |
That's not a very flattering way to treat of customers - and it's probably what has allowed companies like Groupon to form and unleash the cusomers' wrath back onto these stores, effectively driving at least some them into very real bankruptcy dangers .. I would like to think that as a manufacturer that also sells to its customers directly online, you have a more civilized and less "traditional" approach to this topic.
Nevertheless it was an interesting read, but I'm not sure how much applicability this has with regard to the O2 and the ODAC. The main difference is that with neither the O2 nor the ODAC you have any R&D costs that you actually need to recover. And that was my main concern - as Oliver says:
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Originally Posted by olli1324
you guys are all getting exceptional value for money.
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That is very true. But the order of magnitude difference you are alluding to is mostly due to the lack of R&D expenses that the O2 and ODAC come with. The O2's/ODAC's price should really only cover actual costs (which of course includes not just the BOM but everything else like manufacturing, accounting, retailing, and of course a sufficient profit margin too), but it should in no way try to capitalize on the headroom available to similarly performing products.
That was the point of NwAvGuy's effort at least, and it's why the O2 is open source. I know that ODAC itself isn't open source, but my guess is still that YoYoDyne is not asking prices that would require you to be selling the ODAC at a multiple of the $100 guideline - so they've clearly done their part in this effort too.
Ultimately a $5 or $10 difference doesn't really matter that much, so, in contrast to that article above, you do have some headroom here, or at least I'd like to think so .. but when things approach a $50 difference then it does raise a few eyebrows.
As I said before, I didn't know that the standalone ODAC required additional time from skilled professionals, and thus costs understandably more than just the board + enclosure and faceplates. That does certainly explain a lot.
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Originally Posted by olli1324
A note about our postage prices [...] we charge the actual costs we incur
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Yes I realize that the difference in shipping expenses is not your fault. I'm not trying to get any of you into any competition here. Everything considered - power supply, customs, warranty terms, etc. - you pretty much average out to the same price. Plus there's the issue of the enclosure's/faceplates' colors.
But it is weird that (not just with you but in other places too, like eBay) shipments from the US (while still insured) are usually far lower in price than within the EU itself, and especially from the UK.
Still, maybe you'll want to offer your customers the option of shipping your products with an alternative (i.e. non government-owned) company, if there are significant price differences there.
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Originally Posted by swalter
ahem... what about me....  |
Sorry, my bad - I guess appearances can be deceiving. My impression was that this was essentially still some form of a group buy, with no real company backing it.
ODAC shipping coming closer
