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Looper's Delight
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--- Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com> wrote: > Just because something is beyond your budget doesn't mean it doesn't >sell > well. The Echoplex price might be more than you can afford, yet at that > price they sold every single one they were able to make. That makes it > really difficult to understand how the price was too high. It's an >easier > argument to say it was too low. Or to say that they didn't make enough. > >I base that on the ratio of people I hear talking about how cool the >thing > >is and how many actually have one. > > That's sort of anecdotal. It's absolutely anecdotal. I don't do market survey studies on this, but I do talk to a lot of people, especially about things that I'm interested in. > Look at it this way. They put the product out in > the mid-90's. The sales have been good enough to support the company to > this day, as it is their only product. It's available in all the major > catalogs, it's in stores, and advertised in guitar magazines. In the > musical instrument industry, that's pretty successful. I've never seen one in a store. I've only seen it in one catalog (Musicians Friend), and then only recently. I've never seen anyone actually using one in person. Yeah, I know...anecdotal. > > As it is, the price alone relegates it to specialty market status. > > They only cost about $450! That's near the low end of music gear >pricing. Not according to the catalogs I look at. I see lots of "low end" stuff that's pretty powerful these days. Of course, most are missing that "one trick" that this "one trick pony" provides. > Which part of "it sold out" isn't clear? They made all the ones they had > capacity to make. They all got sold. 100% capacity used, 100% sold. Very efficient, but that really doesn't say anything about the market. If I make 10 widgets and I sell them all for $1000, that doesn't mean I couldn't have sold 10,000 widgets at $500 if I'd made them. It also doesn't mean that I couldn't have sold 30 widgets at $1000 each, if I'd made that many. It only says I managed to find 10 people desperate enough for my widget to buy all I made at the price I sold it at. It doesn't speak to the rest of the market. > I guess I'm baffled how you reach that conclusion. Look at the prices of > other gear. Mid-range synths and samplers cost much more than the >Echoplex. > High end gear in other categories costs WAY more. > > So here you have what many people consider a high-end looper in the > echoplex. The best there is in many people's eyes, and it costs $800. > Alright, fine, you have to get two for stereo, but that also gives you >some > nice multi-loop functions. That's $1600 for a high-end stereo looper. >Let's > compare to street prices of other top gear: > > Eventide Eclipse: $2000 > Eventide Orville: $5000 > Eventide DSP7000: $3400 > Korg Triton 88key: $3400 > Korg Triton rack: $1450 > Korg D16XD: $2000 > Yamaha dig piano: $3500 > Yamaha 9000: $3200 > Yamaha Motif 88key: $2800 > Yamaha AW2816: $1800 > Yamaha RS7000: $1400 > TC finalizer: $2400 > TC fireworx: $1760 > TC G-Force: $1440 > TC M3000: $1500 > Gibson Les Paul Custom: $3200 > Access Virus C $1500 > Nord Modular: $1450 > Roland VS2480 $3800 > roland V-Synth $2300 > roland Fantom s88: $2900 > roland xv-5080 $2000 > roland mc-909: $1500 > Kurzweil K2661: $2400 > Lexicon PCM-81: $2000 > Lexicon MPXG2: $1450 > > You see? It sits right in there pretty well. None of that stuff is > affordable for you, yet it all sells well. I don't think that's a fair comparison. With the exception of the Les Paul (a hand built craft item, not a mass produced piece of electronic gear), all those things perform more then one function. Do you think anyone would spend $1440 for a TC G-force if it only did delays? Apparently TC didn't, since they make the D-2, which sells for about $350. Likewise, with the exception of the Les Paul, they all employ current state of the art hardware technology, not stuff designed 15 years ago. re: repeater > It was advertised in Guitar player and keyboard for about a year before >it > came out, and reviewed in all those magazines. And frankly, I think that was part of the problem. They advertised it too early, when it wasn't available, and people got tired of waiting and moved on. re: electrix scraps product line to produce repeater > it sounded like desperation to me. Liquidate everything in a last ditch > effort to get cash. Oh yeah, obviously. But again, that doesn't have anything to do with the market viability of their product, or the price they sold it at (which I thought was what we were discussing). It just says they were undercapitolized for the venture. > One major mistake they made, related to another thread, > is not realizing just how hard it is to develop a functional looper. >They > had no idea what they were getting into and didn't devote enough >resources > or time to it. So it was a year late, and they ran out of money. Yes, totally agreed. It obviously was a bigger effort then they had anticipated. > > > My > >observation from talking to people is that a lot of them really like >the > >idea of > >an advanced looper until they hear the price. At that point they say >something > >like "I think I can probably be happy enough with my DL4" or something > >like that. > > if that is all the functions they need and they just want to dabble in > looping a bit, then they are right. They would be happy with the DL4 and > that is what they should buy. Why should they start out with the >high-end > product? As they learn more about looping they may start wanting a >higher > end product with more features. Then the price of an echoplex might be > worth it to them. I'm just saying that people would like a few more features then the DL4, but without having to pay several hundred more dollars for them. There doesn't appear to be anything in that marketplace. Is it worth $600 to get a feedback control for your loop? One feature? I think there's a market for something with the looping capability of a DL4 or EchoPro with just another feature (feedback control) or so. If the Echo Pro had feedback, I'd have one already. As it is, that makes it a tough decision, since the rest of it looks pretty good, but it's lacking that one thing I really like. Greg __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! 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