Hi,
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Japan... have you noticed the difference in the rent you'd be paying for the same apartment you're living in there, as opposed to an apartment about triple the size in New York City? Not that anyone is giving anything away in NYC... but Japan is without a doubt the most expensive place I've ever been... Paris included.
Nah, NYC is pretty expensive (having been there quite a few times now not with a tourist wallet). Not equally the same as Tokyo, but still, pretty close. London is really expensive now also.
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There is a ton of shady **** that occurs when a product becomes a 'commodity'... especially a 'global commodity'...
Yes, I understand this totally........I'm not disagreeing with you at all.
I won't elaborate much, but I used to do some work for one of the very few Pro Audio mags here, so believe me, I know more than the average end consumer.
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The 'Catch-22' is that in order to move a serious amount of steel you have to make the investment in that kind of an ad budget... or wait the few years for 'word of mouth' to start to get around... which in the case of the 'boutique' manufacturer isn't necessarily a bad thing as it allows the 'boutique' manufacturer to grow their production in an even, orderly manner that keeps up with unit sales... because when sales exceed production, you have a whole other set of ugly mother****ing problems that can be as bad, sometimes even worse, than having a whole lot of steel on the shelf that hasn't found a home.
In Alan's case, I have seen one of the earlier units that are used at Metropolis in the UK over 10 years ago, and have been aware that it has taken quite a while for his name to be known here (and quite a few people I know are digging it).
However, a lot of the importers do not carry ads at all, I know first hand of some manufacturer(s) that are (probably) not enjoying as much as they originally hoped to. Which is a downright shame.
On the other hand, I am starting to see some cases where X brand is pretty much at around the same price, or a "fair" price compared to say the US price for US products. One case is Digidesign stuff, their pricing here is ok (understandably, they do have a Japanese operation). Please check recent magazines for other examples. In such cases, I'm sure the pricing is only realised with effort from both the manufacturer and local distributor/importer, and their sales are probably not bad at all. If this can be done, I do wonder why some other brands cannot, and possibly suffer from a lack of sales.
I'm not dissing the whole distributor/importer system at all, in fact, with distributor/importers I respect for their effort and knowledge/expertise/experience, I do buy from them. However, there are things out here that are so ridiculously priced (I'm sure you can think up of some things) that one begins to have a "?" at times.
Some of the distributor/importers are infamous for such practices amongst the end users and unfortunately, they end up buying grey market stuff most of the time, anyone that has a credit card and understand some English can do this. I do think that distributor/importers have to realise or swallow this fact for them to continue in the long term.