Further to one of my recent replies I would like to know.
Why is modeling in the UK such a ****ing rip off, any idea? [:(!]
****ed Off, Gotter.[:)]
I can’t fully answer that. I do know that the Euro is higher than the dollar.
yeah The UKs models are a Rip of becouse everything else in the UK is a rip off and it wouldnt be frae to eveybody else if us Modelers didnt get Ripped off[8D]
Oh yeah Tigerman we dont use the Euro in the UK we use Pounds Stirling and hopfully always will[:D]
[:I] Please excuse my shortsightedness. I know your gas is ridiculous compared to ours. I’m paying $1.43 a gallon and people still bicker. Just curious what a beer runs you over there.
ok, now i know i’m gonna get slated for this but anyway, here goes…
[soapbox]
like many things in this country (united knigdom[:)], for those across the pond!) which are cr*p, overpriced, poorly staffed and or poorly serviced, they are so because we put up with them!!![:(!][:(!][:(!]
it is only by complaining or taking your money elsewhere that things will ever (and i do mean ever) get any better…they will not miraculously do so on their own.
so i’m sad to say that darling little old model shop which we all know and love has got to get it i’m afraid[:0][:0][:0]
…harsh on them because ultimately they are are only passing on the rip-off prices we have to pay (and i still don’t think our american friends[:)] have any idea how much more we are paying for stuff[:(!]), rather than taking a fat profit for themselves.
however, someone somewhere is, otherwise how else can i see kits at 1/3 the price on the internet!!! (ahh…evil-bay[}:)]…whoever said ignorance is bliss obviously built kits out of the uk!![:p])
the only way for us to bring prices down is to buy them cheaper elsewher until the uk shops bring their prices down in line, or they go out of business…
i’m a big fan of www.hannants.co.uk but they are still way more expensive than in the US, and they are the cheapest in the uk to my knowledge.
sorry if this all sounds a bit harsh, but i did my economics at university, so i know all this stuff works (hell, it’s what drives the whole US economy for goodness sake!)…it’s just we brits need a kick up the ar*e sometimes to go and make things happen!!
and before anyone pipes up about shipping or exchange rates, you’re not telling me it costs 4 times as much to ship from japan/far east to UK as it does to US…no way!
we’re just being ripped off in a massive way…that’s all there is to it, and is why if i can save by getting stuff off the net then i do so, because usually it’s not £1 per kit but £5 to £10 which to me is totally unacceptable.
there, you asked for it!!!
[soapbox]
regards,
nick
All the way with you, Nick.
Hobby shops in the US are more expensive than on line or out of catalogs also. Case in point, I almost bought a Sherman kit at a HS in Milwaukee (two hours from my home) for $33, only to decide against it, pick up some paint and no kits. When I got home a Squadron flier had the same kit for $11. I bought it along with some resin kits for the Sherman Build… not cheap but what can y’do?
I LOVE hobby shops and would do almost anything to support them (if there were any in my area), except pay $22 more for a kit than I can get it on line or out of a catalog. I guess that’s the thing that’s killing the local hobby shop.
I guess if I owned a hobby shop, I’d have my retail business and an online site. I think that’s the only way to survive today other than getting more people to participate in the hobby!
By the way, how much IS a beer over there? I had some very good beer from the UK last weekend…
Ron.
I don’t think it is as much as the hobby shop ripping you off, but more likely too long a supply chain and the wholesalers ripping everybody off.
Ask your LHS how and from where they get their goods, most likely from a wholdesaler in the UK that DECIDES what the UK wants to build and who himself most prolly buys from an overseas wholesaler, etc.
I doubt that most will aquire their stock from places like Hobby Link Japan or similar, most likely they will have a wholesaler somewhere in Hong Kong of Singapore that supplies them.
I worked for some time on weekends in a HS and saw how the local wholesaler bassically ruined the business for the HS.
If you didn’t buy from the wholesaler or complained he would cut you off make sure that your order gets filled last when most likely there was not enough stuff to fill it, etc.
Wow…sound like you guys are getting over taxed…having to pay too much for goods you could probobly get elsewhere cheaper… you know we had that problem, threw all our tea (ok, your tea) into Boston Harbor and started a fight. Now look at us! We ship everything else out to be manufactured so we can spend less money. How revolutionary![}:)]
Sorry I couldn’t resist.[:D][:p] I’m only kidding. I love you guys. If you couldn’t poke a little fun at the whole situation you’d cry.
If I had a choice I’d be living over there right now. How’s the screenprinting industry in the UK?[;)]
Mike
Renarts,
Yeah the silkscreen printing industry over here has gone the same way as the whole textiles industry:- to the flippin dogs mate (or more correctly to the far/middle east).
As an industrial Knitting machine mechanic of 17 years (my hometown is/was the largest textiles producer) I have seen a steady decline in our industry. Admmittedly for the last few years the “rag trade” has been propped up by Asian buisnessmen, even he cannot now compete with foreign imports. The USA finaly put paid to our homespun firms by refusing to buy luxury items cashmere, lambswool etc a few years back.
I no longer work in textiles, I now work for “Pepsico” making potato crisps (or chips you USA guys) for Walkers, part of the American “Frito Leys” group and the largest manufacturing company in the UK (Ironic eh).
Anyway time to get off my [soapbox] long enough to say a decent pint in the UK is fast aproaching 3 quid a pint (oh heck back on the [soapbox]… well maybe later).
Love you guys (hic) all the best, Gotter.
I know what you mean. Most of the textile industry here has its goods manufactured off shore (meaning mexico, honduras, Haiti, guatamala, malaysia and other parts east). Whole towns have become unemployed as a result. One of my biggest printing contracts went to mexico for the cheaper labor.
Way of the dollar I suppose. Doesn’t make it right though.
Well I’ll raise a glass to you here. At $5 for a pint of Guiness, Harp or Bass here in the states it’ll have to last me. Geez I miss Ireland. When I was there beer was 50 p a pint. I could drink all night for a fiver.
Cheers.
Mike
Don’t forget acquisitions from the net require additional freight costs, etc. Don’t just judge the list price of the item. Then there is the convenience of not having to wait for your order. How many guys out there are still waiting for stuff. Convenience comes at a cost too.
That said, come to Australia and see what my local HS charges, ie
$67 AUD (say $52 USD, 28.5 GBP) for the latest DML Firefly
$85 AUD (say $65 USD, 36 GBP) for a Tamiya Sturmtiger.
$140 AUD ($106 USD, 59 GBP) for a DML Karl
etc
Oh Yeah, a take home four pack of 440 ml cans of Guiness costs $11AUD over here. A pint of Guiness in an ‘Irish’ pub is about $8 AUD now. Of course domestic is cheaper [:-^].
Then after all that, look at Dwight. Given what he tells us, the cost of kits in the Phillipines are cheap compared to elsewhere . But don’t forget what the average wage is over there. A kit at his price is still an expensive item over there. All in all everything is relative; don’t compare prices, look at it in the whole context of average family incomes etc. You guys are still better off than some.
Lastly, don’t forget supply and demand is a two edged sword. If no-one buys from the LHS then they will close. If they close, where is the competition to maintain lower prices elsewhere? No competition = less supply available = greater scope for rasing costs and revenue, or at worse case lack of demand = no suppliers at all.
I was looking at Tamiya’s Huckebein in my LHS yesterday, very nice, but not £45 worth of nice!
Prices in the UK are a lot higher, especially for Tamiya & Hasegawa, but I get the impression that Revell Germany and Airfix are comensurately higher in the states and the rest of the world when compared to Europe. Therefore I have mainly bought European kits, as I find it difficult to stomach the extra cost involved in buying Japanese.
I don’t want to buy blind off the internet, as I enjoy scouring the shelves in my LHS looking for that kit which grabs my attention.
I think it is a case of treading a fine line between buying everything online from overseas, and buying from your LHS to support the hobby.
Karl
ive seen the Tamiya’s Huckebein in a shop in shefield for £35 in the sale (its a model shop chain)
I was watching one of those home relocation programmes (“A place in the sun”) on TV last night. A UK family were looking at moving to Texas. They had 80K GBP (about 140K USD) to spend, and I was thinking they would end up living in a shack.
Where I live that amount of cash would only buy a small 3 bed terraced house in a run-down area. They were looking at very nice 4 bed “mansions” in Corpus Christi (seemed like a nice area?). Where I live you would have to pay 4 or 5 times as much. I doubt you could even buy the materials here for that, let alone the land and labour charges.
The average UK house now costs 5 or 6 times the average UK salary.
Most things are priced “pounds for dollars”, which makes them 1.8 times the US price.
Things that are highly taxed, such as petrol, alcohol and cigarettes are even more of a rip-off, maybe 4 times the US price.
UK salaries are, AFAIK, very similar to the US. Average is 20K GBP (36K USD), while minimum wage is 9K GBP (16K USD).
We in the UK are definately being ripped off.
Cheers
Okay, what’s a quid? Also, when we were in Ireland, a pub owner asked “What’ll it be Yank?” when I ‘bellied up’ (funny how he knew I was a tourist!). My answer to this fine fellow was, “What d’you expect?” He nodded, gave me a ‘Now you’re talkin’ and poured a pint of Guiness. Now, there’s a fellow you could grow fond of! … even though he is a mind reader!
Ron
Do you guys in the UK think that taxes along every point of the supply chain are partly responsible? I would assume taxes and such would be higher than here in the states, even without VAT considerations along the way.
Do many of you guys, as I do, think hobby shops selling plastic will be extinct soon anyway. The hardcore modellers are all over new kit releases, and will order over the internet as they know what they want. The passing/new modeller would probably only be interested in a limited range of products, ie the Tamiya Tiger, and would be buying more as an impulse. Just like the $33 Sherman example, many of us are willing to forgo a questionable purchase, as information and pricing are but a click away.
As an aside, houses aren’t cheap over here, but the relocating family will probably also have the advantage of taking a bigger mortgage over here than in the UK. The interest on said mortgage can be written off US taxes, so depending on their tax status, that leverages their money more.
Poniatowski hi,
a “quid” is 1 pound…
monktrade,
i don’t think taxing along the supply chain is the reason for UK over pricing; i believe it is a concerted effort by wholesalers, or the “industry as a whole” to milk a captive market…witness dvd’s (especially with their ‘region 1, region 2’ boll*cks) and cd’s…
n
…eh… Britain doesn’t have Euro’s…
We get the same thing around here with gas. Go 20 miles in either direction and you can get it .30 cents a gal cheaper. When all but a couple of gas stations are owned by the same guy though what can you expect. You would think someone would figure out that they could make more money if people would put more than $2 in here to get to where it’s alot cheaper.