Question:Why are some watch cases so expensive and some so cheap?
Answer:This is an excellent question and deserves an answer. First of all, some customers assume it is because the retailer is being greedy. This is not the case. Retailers are in an extremely competitive business. Margins are usually as small as possible.
Unless you can get a monopoly position, and even then in the long run it makes no sense to over charge for too long, high profits invite in competitors which destroys profits in long run.
Apple i-phones are an example of how the market works, you have development costs, when things first come out they are twice as expensive, then after thousands of units are sold the price of manufacturing plummets.
Economies of scale kick in, and as you saw with the phenomenal success of the i-phone the price can be cut in half! Ironically Apple got punished for lowering their price, all the angry early adapters who paid for the right to own the item first got mad when the next generation was cheaper. Apple did a good thing and the right thing for the consumer, but got blasted because the item was a hit. People felt Apple unfairly took too much money at first, when in reality, they probably made less selling the overpriced units than the cheaper units. Again, this is the issue of development costs. Things are cheap to make in quantity, but setup costs and minimum quantity requirements push the costs through the roof. Most products are not runaway hits, and so the time line for lower prices is usually much delayed....anyway.
Watch Cases are not like i-phones. Our total yearly sales does not even come close to the i-phones daily sales. We never achieve economies of scale in manufacturing products and so our products are more expensive to make in general.
Now specifically why is one case cheap and another expensive?
Well with purses and other mass market products, Brand Names affect price. (This is a minimal effect in the Watch Cases market.) However quality ingredients affects price more than anything. Real leather versus fake leather. The cheap knock of fake leather
knock off Gucci purse is an example of such cost of materials price difference.
We sell a leather watch case called:
Royal 12 Luxury Leather Watch Case with Glass Top. Pictured here.
Some things to point out.
1. Real Glass- not plastic lid.
2. Latch- many cases do not latch.
3. Key and Lock- many cases with a latch do not lock.
4. Real Leather - many cases sold as leather are not, they are made from good fake leather. But the customer buying a $50 for case thinking it is leather is not an educated consumer and never knows the difference. Ignorance might truly be bliss.
5. Quality Leather- the grade of leather used can double the price. Cheap leather can sometimes cost less than a quality fake leather, but good leather, the kind you you can see, smell and feel. Well this is what we used and it is expensive!
6. Quality Leather is expensive because it is hard to work with and takes craftsmanship to put together. Cheap leather or fake leather takes a guy and a glue gun!
7. Stitched leather versus glued. Stitching is extremely expensive.
8. Fit and Finish. This is a real cost impact.
9. Pillows- a correctly sized pillow is expensive to make. Many cases sold are a good 15% smaller than these pillows, which are sized for the average man sized Rolex watch, but also sized to fit most ladies watches. Exact measurements are expensive.
10. Loss Leaders- Some large retailers sell non-specialized items as loss leaders, just to get you on their mailing lists. They know they can sell other things to you later.
11. Products that do not work are often dumped onto the market. Customers buy these cheap dumped items only to find out they do not work. But usually it is too late, the cost of return shipping exceeds the cost of the item so they make due.
12. Pictures might be worth a thousand words but a cheap watch case picture online can look almost like a high quality luxury watch case but do not be fooled by a low price! Touching leather must be worth a million words. Order one of these cases and touch and smell and you can tell!
Labels: Donald, watch case
by: WatchCases
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