highway robbery!!!
I was listening to my XM radio earlier today and they were talking about I-pods and how they are a hot selling item and he asked the question, "do you know how much it costs the company to MAKE and I-pod, labor AND parts included?" the I-pod Nano was the one he was referring to.
Guess HOW much?? SEVENTEEN FRIGGIN DOLLARS!!!!! AND THAT crap COSTS 150.00 IN THE STORES!!!! DO YOU SEE how much PROFIT THAT IS!!????
WELL, at least we know that they are washable, huh?? LOL!!!
Comments
for those that don't know ...
for those that don't know what I mean in that last line, click on the music category on the left and you'll see my post from Oct. about it!
You could not be more ...
You could not be more wrong. Sorry Dawn but I photographed weddings for 17 years and people thought it was theft to charge them more than $30 for an 8x10 when I paid about $2 for it. I also went to college for photography, purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment for their wedding photos I shot. Owned a few tuxes, traveled many miles to as many as four locations on weekends to shoot them, met with them for at least one and sometimes two or three consultations lasting for hours. I worked on average 30-40 hours on every wedding from start to finish. I paid for film, processing and prints that they often did not purchase. I worked until 2am on many jobs and did not get back home until 2:30 or 3am. The programmers and engineers and lawyers and patent attorne ys and marketers and advertisements etc. for the iPod surely also racked up much more in costs than the simple equation of material costs per unit just as with my 8x10's. To reduce it down to merely that alone is such a gross over simplification that it boggles my mind. I paid $135 for my son's 4G iPod Nano and thought it was a steal. Most cars cost millions to produce if only ONE were sold but economies of scale, a VITAL economist term here, allow us to buy them for a mere $10-20K in many cases. The cost of production per unit alone is only a TINY part of the entire equation. By that logic we would pay only a few paltry thousand (under 50 in most cases) for a house. That's what the materials cost. I have people in my "regular" job who are so short sighted that they have no enthusiasm in their department because we sell some major materials below cost. So what? It's the big picture I try to tell them. Our company, is in the Fortune 50. It's the Big Picture that you have to keep in mind. We make much more on all of the little parts the customers will buy to put their project together. Is that wrong? Since when is it anti-American to profit from hard work? When did "profit" become a dirty word? When one invests a fortune to bring good products to the consumer, and (this is KEY) the consumer is willing to pay (a little thing known as supply and demand) for it, than that is a fair price dictated By The marketplace, by the Consumer! If the price was too high for the consumer, the consumer would not pay it, not unless it was a necessity! And the company producing the product or service would go out of business. End of story.
how am I WRONG, that's ...
how am I WRONG, that's what the guy on the radio said, I only repeated it??!!
yeah well I know more than ...
yeah well I know more than JUST parts and labor is put in to have made it possible BUT it still gets to me when it only took 17 bucks to make each one after all that's said and done!
Either you did not hear ...
Either you did not hear that but thought that's what you heard or they were grossly mistaken. It does not "take" 17 bucks to make one. It probably costs that much for materials. It took me nearly $15 to make each of those 8x10's even though the materials were only a dollar or two. Just driving to the lab and back for a print cost more than the materials. Add up all of those other quite real training/research/development costs, operational costs, all that overhead like rent, utilities, advertising, bookkeeping, transportation, yes - materials too - ALL of them including those that aren't in the final product but may be used to produce it and there's packaging and shipping materials, labor which is NO Small item...
Until you add up the total costs you would be literally paying the customer to take the product. Dawn, you're a nice person so take this friendly advice - Do NOT go into business for yourself, not unless you first get some serious business school behind you, like no less than a 4 year degree because you are so far off the mark there that you could qualify for going into politics.
Labeling people, thinking ...
Labeling people, thinking that because they support one idea (such as free market system) and therefore have to be republican (republicans are NOTHING even REMOTELY resembling "conservative" in economics!!!!!) labeling people that way is nothing short of ignorance. It is simplistic thinking to say that because I support anti pollution measures that I must be anti 2nd amendment or against a woman's right to decide if she should have a baby that's the result of a brutal rape. Republicans have a lot of difficulty believing in people's rights to believe what they want to believe. They're against free speech. How on Earth is that "conservative" when the nation was founded on that, among many other extremely highly placed principles that ensure our freedom?
The terms liberal and conservative are little boxes that people with little minds insist on stuffing people into. Republicans do it the most. They call themselves "conservative" when they are not, another sign of outright foolishness.
Stick to the facts of an issue. In this case, that's the free market system dictated by supply and demand. Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it. The only exceptions I see are when it comes to necessities that are controlled by monopolies. Republicans seem to think it's OK for those who have extreme excess and power to starve people and let them freeze to death where in other countries they do not. It's selfish and immature. Quite a number of republicans need to grow up and get a heart. In this case though, I can't shed tears for someone who can't afford gizmos. My son and I did without the iPod for years while others had them. He had an MPIO and a Sansa that weren't as good but we survived. I worked harder and earn more now and got the iPod, that's just fact, not politics.
<p>DAMN, I just came to ...
DAMN, I just came to put up a funny FRIENDLY little post that I DID hear on the radio cuz they repeated it 3 THREE TIMES so I KNOW what I heard and it gets all turned around into BULLSHIT and now I can't go into business for myself because I'd go broke cuz I DON'T KNOW BETTER!!??
WTF!!?? GOD, that's the last time I bring up anything!
and I DO HAVE a 4yr degree ...
and I DO HAVE a 4yr degree already!
Sorry if that upset you ...
Sorry if that upset you Dawn. I was merely pointing out how raw materials cost is but one very small part of the equation in development, production and marketing of a product so to say that something is over priced based on only one part is not fair to the company being slammed. That's not a slam against you. I realize you were only repeating what you heard. These days it seems that everyone has an agenda. All too often, with the media, the agenda is to sensationalize, to get people riled up (whether right or wrong) because it sells (ads that is since people watch/listen more to the media when they prey on our emotions). We've all been victimized by it. It's hard to know what to believe anymore.
While I never went to business school I did learn a LOT in the school of hard knocks. A college degree in fine art was no match for "the real world" and all of the sheisters out there. Too often I had to learn the hard way. But the key is learning from mistakes. Some of them were very valuable lessons such as getting paid in full before delivering a product. Stores do that. They don't let me out of the door without first paying so I am like a store with my studio and I tried letting people pay later but that only worked up until the first time someone walked out with my photos and I never heard from them again despite repeated attempts. That was the Last time I allowed that. So I'm not perfect either. There seems to always be someone trying to pull some new "game" over on me and I've learned to be more cautious. Call me cynical but I don't go paying for someone else's portrait session anymore. The biggest companies (who will boast they're big companies so therefore I should trust them) have turned out to be the biggest culprits too. And I've heard many times how I should charge less because a print only costs me so much for the paper. If that were the case, lawyers would get paid pennies because their paper is so cheap. A delivery would cost only what the gas costs and nothing for the wear and tear on the delivery vehicle, nothing for depreciation, nothing for insurance, nothing for the delivery person so he/she can feed their family... I don't mean to sound unkind but if your degree was in business, and the school did not teach you that, I would quite seriously be after that school for a refund.