Quote:
Originally Posted by Brundah1
It was briefly mentioned in this thread, but worth drawing the discussion back to the real problem of high cost of astro gear in OZ.
Market volume and competition drives down prices! I doubt Harvey Norman and Big W will ever sell quality astro gear
There is no comparitive market volume in OZ for these main chain stores to buy products at the right volume price ex-factory! So we are left with closed franchises and small retailers.
10% GST and import duty are not the issues - full stop!
The reason the new Celestron Distributor lowered the prices is because they negotiated a deal with Celestron to buy ex-factory - not via USA.
They still have to buy accessories via USA - so those prices have not varied. My source of info is direct from S&H and I have discussed with them the idea of establishing a better relationship owners of Celestron telescopes to offer deep discounts on one-off buys of specific accessories ex-factory the same way as the telescopes.
Also I have watched my son established direct importing of specific electrical industry components ex-factory in China - he has been to industry shows in China twice this year. Direct access and volume drives prices in China!
However setting up as an importer in OZ requires capital and a targetted market.
These are the real issues.
David
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The thing with high volume markets is that much of the merchandise that's sold in those markets is of the "must have the latest" type...it wouldn't surprise me if 60-70% or more of the scopes sold in the US get little, if any use and are just status items for most of the buyers over there. Even in a country as large as the US, few people would be "real" amateur astronomers. There's probably no more than 2-4 million people out of a pop'n of 320 million that would regularly use their scopes or even be interested in astronomy. Yet if you look at the sales figures over there, there's probably 30-40 million that own a scope and they keep buying up every year. If they were less concerned about status and keeping up with the Jones's, the market in the US would be sufficiently small enough to drive the prices up there as well. Knowing how vociferous people in the US can be about the costs of things, can you imagine getting away with charging nearly $4000 for a CPC800...like they do here in Oz!!!. Not likely. The big problem with Australia is that it's not large enough to support a high volume sales market in quality scopes and optical goods, yet it has a large enough astronomical community to support much better competitive pricing of those goods that are sold here. There's not a million or more amateurs out here, but there'd be quiet a few thousand of them...I'd dare say 100,000. Small, but not a bad little market. Give them a little slack, don't try to become a millionaire overnight, and you'd find that you'd sell a lot more than you would if you went about doing things like some distributors do.
