1. posterid:1111454
  2. CN again with misinfo

Re: CN again with misinfo

Stuart Heggie <stuart.j.heggie@...>
 

Rolando, I worked for many years in Marketing at a very large multinational. I would regularly get assailed by a customer over a price increase. They'd trot out figures about the cost of this that and the other raw material, producer price index changes etc. My response was always the same: My costs are none of your business. My prices reflect the VALUE we create. If you think you can do better elsewhere, go ahead and try but I'm certain my prices are very fair for the value I deliver.

In one epic case the buyer for a MAJOR company tried to call my bluff. He stockpiled our product, started buying from a cheap competitor and to-the-day-we-calculated-he'd-run-out-of-our-stuff, he was back buying at list price. The competitor's stuff did not deliver the value we did. No discounts for loyalty anymore.

You don't owe us an explanation for why your prices are what they are. Value is what this is about. Not cost.


On Sat, 7 Sep 2019 at 20:00, chris1011@... [ap-gto] <ap-gto@...> wrote:
 

Your claim that 250 lb of aluminum and steel can be had for $200 per mount is not correct. I simply want to correct the misinfo that was posted and typically aluminum in the type we use is between $2 and $2.50 per lb and steel is at $3.00 from our suppliers. If we could get it at such low prices then indeed that would impact our cost in a favorable way. However, that is not the case.

Rolando


-----Original Message-----
From: Ross Salinger rgsalinger@... [ap-gto] <ap-gto@...>
To: ap-gto@... <ap-gto@...>; ap-ug@... <ap-ug@...>
Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2019 6:45 pm
Subject: Re: [ap-gto] CN again with misinfo



I may well be a blatherer, been called much worse, but numbers are numbers. I think that the Mach 2 is a great mount and actually good value. You may have missed that part of my post. Still, you can buy a lot of aircraft grade aluminum for a lot less than 3 USD/lb. Even so, let's use 3 dollars times 250 pounds. That comes to 750 dollars for the metal in 9400 dollar mount. OK. Now, let's look at the price (spot on the LME) and they have been stable for the past year. So, the claim that tariffs have resulted in substantial increased metal costs to end users seem hard to understand.
Rgrds-Ross
On 9/7/2019 4:36 PM, chris1011@... [ap-gto] wrote:
 
Hi Astrofolk,

Saw this today on CN:

"This afternoon Roland said each mount starts out as 250 pounds of aluminum and steel and is machined down from there. To 39 pounds. That's a lot of grinding." - at current spot prices for aircraft grade aluminum that comes to about $200 dollars per mount on Alibaba. So, I'm not sure how tariffs play into this discussion."

I can't respond to this on CN. The price we pay for our aluminum from our suppliers is between $2.00 and $2.50 per lb depending on whether it's thick wall, barstock or other. Stainless cost about $3.00 per lb. Multiply that by 250lb and that number is what it costs in raw metal to make a beefy mount. On top of that there is always a cutting charge which typically quite a bit. That of course doesn't include the motors, bearings, fasteners, connectors, electronic components, and other knicknacks and paddywacks that all have gone up since last year.

I wish people would not blather about what companies' cost are since they have no idea what companies use, where they get it or other circumstances. None of the US manufacturers are in a particularly good spot when it comes to competing with certain overseas manufacturers, but we do our best. And it is not the way to riches these days - if you want to make money in today's economy you need to invent the next internet app, certainly not by inventing the next great telescope product. However, for me and our crew it is our passion, and it's what we know. It is enjoyable work and we get great satisfaction in making stuff that people love to use.

Rolando
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