Want!

While I'm in full agreement with you wrt to trackdays, and maybe peeps
that don't have center stands, I think you are looking at it from a one
off point of view. I've just bought a laptop for 280 quid for chrissake.

It's a very simple mechanism, easy to assemble, and as you point out,
probably a market for it. 100 quid tops.

 

You try getting an engineering shop to make one for 100 quid.

 

LOL, the irony is... oh LOFL.

You could save up and buy one with your new best friend and wife sharer,
Champ.

 

That's your job and I'm sure wit TOG's expertise you could get some
industry insiders to knock a load up for less than half of that.

 

OK, I take your point about the bikelift because you've obviously got a
blinkerd view of it and I'll direct your attention to tail tidies. Do
you think the tooling and materials make them worth the price they are?
The point I'm making is that with the exeption of a few nuts nd bolts,
bikeaccessories are hugloly ove-priced and if people weren't supid
enough to pay outrageous prices for them the prices would come dow. 400
quid for an end can... can you honestly say that's good value for money?
I go a noticable increase in power when Pip cut my CBR exhausts off and
that cost nothing except my hearing for a few minutes.

 

Of course.

I don't have problem with that, it's over-priced shite that pretty boy
sportsbike riders must have that pushes other stuff up for the rest of us.

 

Making one is expensive. Making a thousand is cheap.

 

Plus if you make too many and no-one wants to pay X amount for them then
you're going to have to punt them out at a reasonable price.

 

Forty quid? You're having a laugh. I suppose I could knock up
something like that with the estimable WUN's assistance, but once the
design had been sorted, the materials alone would run to more than
forty quid - even sourcing new steel at scrap price it'd be more.
Then there's the pivots, bolts and finishing, not to mention the
welding consumables. Without considering the time it would take, if I
wanted one of them for myself I reckon it would cost me about eighty
quid.

A couple of hundred may seem unreasonable to you, but you've not
considered the time spent in designing the thing, the required
approvals to prove it is safe and the testing to make sure it would be
reliable - all of which cost. Allocating labour, factory space and
time, energy to make it and transport to get it into the shops, plus a
neccessary profit margin for the manufacturer and the retailer on top
of the cost of materials (all of which have a profit margin for the
suppliers) makes a couple of ton seem reasonable to me.

Prove me wrong - go and make one for forty quid.

 

You're talking out of your arse.
--
Dave
GS850x2 XS650 SE6a

"It's a moron working with power tools.
How much more suspenseful can you get?"
- House

 

Making one is totally different to tooling up and making them by the
container load.

Forget tooling and design costs because the design is already there
and the tooling is really basic so I honestly think you could be
selling them on for £100 a time and making a decent profit as long as
you ran it alongside another product.

Obviously it'd be different if that was the only thing you were
planning to manufacture because you'd have a shed load of overheads to
cover but a company like Abus (or whoever makes Abus stands) would be
pissing themselves with laughter if they were selling them for £100.

 

Unfortunately it is patented, well, allegedly it is - look in the top right
corner where the more info bit is

 

It may be 30 quid of materials - but unfortunately not everyone has the
facilities to design and build their own - what with all the metal working
and stuff. How much do you think the materials in your PC are worth?
Removing all R&D/manufacturing/storage/distribution/marketing costs of
course - because that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do it seems heh! I
doubt we're talking much more than pence per component these days, aside
from really top end CPUs etc, which are still maybe only 5% of the RRP to
make... Although I must admit, no idea how much these things really cost,
if anyone can confirm or correct me?

I mean, you can't expect them to go through all that and charge you nothing
on top of the materials cost, that's totally unreasonable. It would take
forever for them to earn anything meaningful profitwise selling them for £40
on their own, or if they supplied distributors they'd obviously have to
charge them a lot less so they could make their cut... And if the rrp is
£40 and the materials are £30, they probably can't make them cheap enough
for anyone to take them on I'd have thought.

 

WC's got a point though, hasn't he? It can't be that pricey to make, as
the company has to have some sort of margin. As was said down there
though vvv the more you make, the cheaper it is. However it still is a
specialised piece of kit, so I can't see that many being made to lower
the costs enough.

 

How do you think engineering firms earn the money to buy the very
expensive machinery they use, and the tools, labour, training of staff
etc. Those are the hidden costs. It's all very well saying "It can't
cost them more than 30 quid to make", but only a complete fool would
ignore what else goes into it and how much the firm has to pay in
overheads etc.

 

That's why I said in an earlier post that it could be made at a low
cost by someone already manufacturing similar type items. advertising
costs would be **** all (1), tooling costs would be negligible and
design costs would be either cost to patent the idea or a couple of
grand to buy out the sheep shagger.

I think you're massively over estimating how much cash goes into
training, plant and facilities, materials and the company cat. I could
make jigs and fixtures to enable the manufacture of one of those
stands in under a week and any CAD work would be done in about 2 days.

It's all about volume and about how many individual components in the
assembly would be interchangeable with other items in the company
product range.

(1) Change the website to show a new product. How long does that take?

 

True, but those setup costs are a one off. I bet WUN could knock one up
in his garage.

 

No, the cost of the machines and tools is ongoing, as replacements will
eventually need to be bought. Thngs don't last forever. It's called
reinvesting.

 

Neat, but I thought the following vid was a bit of an anti climax



--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

I fear you may be wasting your time - Mark appears to be having some
kind of relapse.