Damir.
I just got to thinking about it. To begin with, I have no idea what the Promat would actually cost, and how trends are going, so I imagine the price is up "for the average guy" without relatives in Norway, like myself, or other connections. Maybe give Crowbear fife hundred bucks to smuggle it to Albania and ship it from there, greasing the customs guy a bottle of potato vodka...
I'd realistically knock off about 20&+or- for a person with the initiative to go through other than retail channels.
Other people that want to officially import them, do all the friggin paperwork, take the customs BS, and have every dime accounted for on an IRS form, I'd gladly give them the %.
I know Bobbe fairly well, and I know that he's not making enough after all this crap to make as much as he does on his other rigs.
It's too easy to think otherwise.
At my age, health indications, etc, I've vome to view things a little differently than a totally detached, mass market mentality. Even for "curiosities" like most PSGs are.
Mr Papic, if my take of his economy could build guitars end to end, with overlaps, and still not make half the money I make, or a third of the money you make, and though given a better income than the median in his country, is not making a pile of money on these guitars.
Not like our "top companies" that job out these "space age cabinets" or "custom machined parts" to forced labor outlets on the internet, if not to the "pacific rim", buffed up to sound better. Nobody can tell me that they don't make a 50% profit. Not the ones that put out more than two dozen guitars a year.
What is "Zero" for their "profit margin" is what they make ON TOP of the cost of their loans, and as many living expenses as the IRS will buy as deductions. Take 20% off and you're close.
I've got a pretty good head for overall cost, profit margin, wholesale price, and the GOUGE.
Factor in all the hijinx of these fly by night "factories" that have long ago spent full retail prices paid years in advance and instead of working on guitars one by one, or even two by two, they go in grudgingly and their day is spent doing the guitars of the people that are the biggest pain in their ass, the ones they feel guiltiest about neglecting, or basically, damage control.
Kind of like the love and care that must have gone into the guitar of the guy that had half the internet on a companies' ass to finish his guitar after leaving it on the "list" for two years after it should have been done.
Maybe the guitar of the guy that's paying "half retail" for this guitar to make up for the guitar he got screwed on the last time tht company went titzup..
That's a hell of a way to have your guitar built..
Balance this against a guy that is doing what he loves, and creating a craft oriented business and incorporating family members that
want to be in it, into it, can't wait to get to the shop to get all the levers, bearings, pulls, etc together, and make another guitar that might even be better than the last one.
It's tempting to say that I don't know Mr Papic, and that he might very well be making his daily plans to job out every possible part to Red China, get some refugees to work for loaves of bread polishing his parts, designing a new "space age" cabinet that can be made for 300$, popped out of vacuform molds, marketed through musicians friend, buying heim joints by the thousands, only having to throw away half of them, or using parts out of the "parts that used to work" box, and make a KILLING.
Somehow I doubt it.
This might be the kind of guy that if he finds out that somebody didn't do their job right, they ended up with a crappy run of parts, or a single crappy part, instead of hurrying it up, and hoping the publicity won't be bad enough for them to make another few thousand bucks to pay the bills, might just throw a fit, do what it takes to get it done
right, and let all his decisions flow down from
that..
Not that there aren't companies and builders that build FINE guitars that way, but there are definitely those what don't..
In the Sho~Bud department, My Marrs is a good example of seldom found craftsmanship.
The time it took, even without the parts was way over 2000$. If I have to put another grand into it to incorporate MY ideas, and special little "improvements", I've still got a guitar that's worth more to me than any other guitar. As it is, market value is an easy three grand. I'd take 6500 for it. It's not for sale though.
Further, I'm not seeing why the Emmons label is any sacred cow. Do people think Buddy Emmons is still with the company?
While I'm rambling, in Portland at Apple Music is a wall full of Les Pauls tagged at 10-30 grand apiece. I would rather have a guy show up my gig playing a spray painted Squire than any one of them. There's also a gay looking (NTTAWWT) MOP inlayed LP by the cash register with a 50,000$ pricetag on it. I can't help but think that Kelly is just hoping for it to get snagged in a robbery. I'm surprised the place hasn't burned down myself.
Pricing is done the way it is for several reasons.
Having lived here a half century, as well as travelling overseas, I'd have to say that the way things are done for better or worse in other countries, go right straight over the heads of most of us.
I'd be interested in seeing how this guitar "Stacks up" to these guitars done the classic "american way".
THAT's the test.
"Trying to teach americans "economics" only makes you tired, and annoys the americans." -Alan Greenspan-
Bobbe.
I Love you.
I don't even say that to my long suffering live in ex-wife anymore...
People don't realise that you got your money the old fashioned way, by marrying big busted rich women, buying their cars, and selling them after the divorce..
EJL<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Eric West on 17 April 2005 at 08:59 PM.]</p></FONT>
