Harman Price Increases

Often, a sudden (feeling) large price means that the supplier did not make the frequent modest incremental increases that their costs would have justified. At some point, costs cannot be ignored and the catching up is painful.

At one point I was in sales and had a competitor who had kept their prices the same for years. That competitor eventually had to face the upward creep of costs and had to bring their prices back into line all at once. I got quite a bit of business from customers who were hopping mad at them. I didn't take unfair advantage of the situation, and explained to anyone who spoke of their price jump that the competitor was just getting back to where they should have been. Didn't matter. The customers were very hot under the collar, and bought extra from me for a while out of sheer spite.

Matt5791 said:

Not sure I 100% agree. I think the first thing people do when they want to try film is google it, do some research and then, most likely, buy on line.

Is there an "effort" to mail ordering film? I don't think so.

Arguably, film and associated products, are extremely easy to obtain now, although I would accept this is not necessarily the case in some countries.

Matt

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Perhaps "effort" was a poor choice of wording on my part. But mail order is not an impulse purchase. And the cost of shipping is a factor.

For example, I just ordered about 20 rolls from Freestyle. The cost of shipping was very low when amortized over those 20 rolls (not to mention the other items I ordered). Bit if I was ordering 1-2 rolls of film - which is probably more likely for a first time, casual user - the cost of shipping adds a lot to those 2 rolls.

mgb74 said:

Perhaps "effort" was a poor choice of wording on my part. But mail order is not an impulse purchase. And the cost of shipping is a factor.

For example, I just ordered about 20 rolls from Freestyle. The cost of shipping was very low when amortized over those 20 rolls (not to mention the other items I ordered). Bit if I was ordering 1-2 rolls of film - which is probably more likely for a first time, casual user - the cost of shipping adds a lot to those 2 rolls.

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On the other hand, a first time film user who is intending to develop their own film and possibly make prints will need more than a couple of rolls of film to get started.

Tom

CBG said:

....Often, a sudden (feeling) large price means that the supplier did not make the frequent modest incremental increases that their costs would have justified. At some point, costs cannot be ignored and the catching up is painful.....

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A good example where the result has been terminal is Fujicolor paper; for many years the price on sheet colour papers was slaughtered in the UK, Kodak & Fuji neck & neck. Now Fuji have found it isn't worth being involved any more and have discontinued sheets in Europe, the last boxes are being sold now.

mgb74 said:

But mail order is not an impulse purchase.

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I have a couple of beers, do a bit of browsing (amazon, etc) and go to bed. In the next few days I get suprised by unexpected parcels arriving and vaguley remember thinking 'that book might be interesting'. Is it only me?

thomsonrc said:

I have a couple of beers, do a bit of browsing (amazon, etc) and go to bed. In the next few days I get suprised by unexpected parcels arriving and vaguley remember thinking 'that book might be interesting'. Is it only me?

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Haha... this is totally me too. I do this with CDs and books from Amazon, and random B&H orders. It's fun, but do it too often with too much drinking and you might start having some money problems.

Tom Kershaw said:

On the other hand, a first time film user who is intending to develop their own film and possibly make prints will need more than a couple of rolls of film to get started.

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If the film would remain in reasonable size of business then not really. There are still some labs which would process B&W film daily, and I'd expect a first time user to try to get processing done by someone experienced, at least for the first time, so as to know if the camera & exposition is OK before processing yourself, as well as to have a sample of properly developed film. This path would probably be easier for first-timer, although I know many of B&W users had acquired their experience on the harder way.