why the heck are the grado woodies more expensive than the space shuttle

craftsmanship? they do look a bit more then a cut piece of wood though. quite beautiful. judging from your post you must like them pretty bad too...

The plumber came round and replaced my tap. The new tap cost £15. My bill was £75. I'm paying for deployment of skills which I do not have. Then there's the cost of the petrol, road tax, insurance and maintenance of the plumbers van, his overalls and tools, the wages for his employees or apprentices if he has any and the administrative costs plus time needed to deal with my bill. That's ignoring all of the time he spent in plumber school learning how to replace a tap (and other plumbing things). The cost to him was not as simple as £15 for the tap and half an hour of his time.

The whole "stuff should cost what parts cost plus tree-fiddy, more is a rip off" attitude is such nonsense.

Block of unfinished specialist wood. Tools needed to put together a workshop, electricity needed to run the workshop. Maintenance on the tools and consumables. Time needed to craft a block into a well finished product, distribution, cost of maintaining a website, skills needed for originality of design and competancy of execution.

If you're really that disgusted by it, don't buy the product, but I'll wager that you're probably not one of the small minority of people to execute that kind of construction yourself and if you are, you wouldn't be doing it at barely over cost if you ran a business. A product is made to a price point. That price is somewhere between the minimum the seller can possibly sell for and the maximum they can get away with. The acceptance of the market of that product at that price dictates how well it sells.

I mean seriously, they are just a piece of denim sewn to fit the legs, if you had the equipment it wouldnt cost half of half of half of that price, thats just insanely overpriced, $50 for a piece of denim sewn to specifications?

good lord

I understand y'all have different opinions, however there's no need to be sarcastic or demeaning about it.

Grado has a pricing structure designed to maximize their income over the entire product line rather than pricing each model strictly based on manufacturing and engineering costs. That kind of pricing model is somewhat explained here: Oh, You Wanted "Awesome" Edition. It's economics. Makes good business sense. If you have a product line rather than an individual product the optimal pricing structure becomes quite different than how you would price an individual product. If Grados only headphone was the RS1 its price would certainly be different.

Grado isn't the only company who prices things that way. It's all over in audio. Look at the Denon headphone line. Look at cable companies who offer a line of cables from not so expensive up to absurdly expensive. The prices are obviously not based strictly on cost accounting numbers. The costs are based more on trying to get the customer to part with more money if they are willing. The way you do that is by having a product line with lots of choices and price accordingly.

Is this the best pricing model for the consumer? No.
Is it good business for the company? Yes.
Does it cause consumers to wonder how the company justifies the cost increases from one model to another? Yes.

If I was a business major or economics major I could explain it all better. There's entire books on this in business schools.

If you want it and don't want to pay someone else, do it yourself. Find the wood, cut, shape, and finish it, replace the cups and be careful not to break the liners.

Don't forget insurance cost on the property, vehicles, equipment, and employees. And lawyers, more than one. Accountants, too. Taxes.......

Those sound spectacular too.

Aren't those yours, Dan? If so, I agree. They sounded great to me.

Yup, those were mine.

Easy now, it may just been a case of sticker shock is all. Being new to this hobby, I've found my self startled by some of the prices of some of the items I covet. But after a bunch of research,(R&D costs, part replacements, time spent modding, etc.) reality sets in. Just might have been the case with the OP.

Damn, those cans are sexy.

Where do you get a space shuttle for 150$-350$? /me want one!

Eh, all the profit is built into the higher end Grados. My guess is that the margin is fairly thin on the plastic models. The gravy comes at the higher end.

And I don't knock Grado for it.

Lots of businesses are built this way. Car manufacturers, for one.