If you had to replace everything

[Daydream believer]

Typically market pricing is well coordinated across the global players now, and I know of some manufacturers who have had supply agreements with component companies that state they cannot sell product X at below a certain value for a number of years, in return for an minimum purchase agreement.

One way around this employed by some of my cycling friends is to create a "buying club" where the club or a member opens an account with a shop or distributor and all other members order through this. The total volume of sales over a year is enough to get a decent discount, which is passed on to the members. ........... but i'm sure a deal could be coordinated with the local chandlers by a club for example.

I was under the impression that retail price maintenance was made illegal in the Thatcher years.

For our moorings , I have been bulk buying the mooring equipment since 2004 for our mooring holders. We assess what is needed every year, take any special orders & I then search the market on behalf of everyone. I generally have held the stocks & distribute to them at slightly above cost, to cover some associated costs, Travelling, phone etc.. It has worked quite well & I think most have been happy that the gear has been cheaper that way. It has avoided owners having to source themselves. We also keep a control on quality of chain design of moorings etc.---
NB Hope I do not upset mods-- but we currently have moorings available- see Moorings

 

[jacaldo]

my baby Blake would cost 5 grand to replace!!!

I've always got one here if you're stuck for a reconditioned one.

 

[laika]

About 20 years ago a motorcycle magazine priced building a fairly average mid-range road bike from parts. I think the bike was around £5k on the road but built of parts cost closer to $40k.

I had a similar story from a bmw dealer 25-ish years ago when I was grumbling about the cost of trivial spares (I think it was >£60k to construct a £8k bike).

I confess to getting very lucky when buying my first (/current/only) boat. Despite knowing the cost of similar model boats and knowing how much the electronics would cost to replace I didn't pay attention to all the deck hardware. Turns out decades old top of the range harken stuff is still *really* nice today when serviced and would cost many thousands to replace with something of equivalent quality. Ditto the enormous bariant winches etc. After a decade of boat owning I now know the difference between two apparently identical boats, one of which has rubbish plastic sliders and the other of which has luverly harken ball bearing batton cars

 

[TernVI]

I've been looking at pushbikes lately.
The price of some spares and upgrades is horrific.
If you want a new gear train, the cheapest way might be to buy a brand new bike.
Back in the last century, I knew people who bought brand new motorbikes, high end japanese stuff, and stripped them for spares.
These days I think that happens with the Chinese stuff.

Firms who buy stuff in volume get much better prices.
Same in every industry.
An electronics component I just bought cost me £3. If I was designing it into a production run of 5000 units, it would be 30p or less.
Does that mean I've been ripped off? No, it costs money to run a shop (even an ebay one!) holding stock, taking time to sell one £3 item. You have to shift a lot of £3 items every hour to pay the minimum wage.
Welcome to the industrial revolution, mass produced stuff is cheap. More so if you're buying a lot of it.

 

[lustyd]

All of the bikes I've bought* have been approximately the value of their parts. The problem is that nobody sells biks with the parts I want so I end up replacing most of the parts. I guess it's similar with the boat, most of what I'm replacing doesn't strictly need replacing as the boat was in excellent condition when I bought it.

*to be fair my bikes are on the upper end of the spectrum

 

[Moodysailor]

I was under the impression that retail price maintenance was made illegal in the Thatcher years.

For our moorings , I have been bulk buying the mooring equipment since 2004 for our mooring holders. We assess what is needed every year, take any special orders & I then search the market on behalf of everyone. I generally have held the stocks & distribute to them at slightly above cost, to cover some associated costs, Travelling, phone etc.. It has worked quite well & I think most have been happy that the gear has been cheaper that way. It has avoided owners having to source themselves. We also keep a control on quality of chain design of moorings etc.---
NB Hope I do not upset mods-- but we currently have moorings available- see Moorings

Absolutely correct, and I wasn't fully clear.

Manufacturers do not collude on retail pricing (99.9% of the time), what I meant is that a manufacturer will set a global minimum price for a product (e.g a Lewmar winch) will be globally set by Lewmar so that the prices are aligned across gobal regions.