Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Re: Cranky Kim



--- 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! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com