Let me add a few thoughts here.
A swiss gold can be made to drop as fast, or as slow as one wants by changing the coarseness of the grind. This one is a funnel, the swiss gold, a bit... flatter of a funnel. Being stainless, I would think this one might be a bit more durable than a SG, because the gauge of the metal appears thicker.
It might not be much different than a swiss gold but it 'is' something different. How many people shoveled out a few hundred bucks for an RK drum when they were making them? All that is is some steel welded into a tube shape with ends on it, not very sophisticated. you even had to provide your own motor to turn the thing, and barbecue to roast in. Not too many people complained, it was something people wanted and they were willing to pay for it, because they didn't want to hastle trying to do it themselves. If people want it, let them be happy with it. If they think it's too much buck for the bang, then they need not get it.
On his costs. Maybe if he had 10,000 of them made or 100k the price would have been significantly cheaper. See in his case, as in any business, the original machining and tooling is a killer. We are going to charge you X thousands of dollars to design the thing, X to program it for our CNC laser cutter. then X per unit for the metal and X per unit to cut it. now add packaging shipping handling and all that crap, it adds up. now lets throw in the custom die to form it, that had to be tooled. Some of that $hit can cost thousands for someone to make a die for you. Given he's playing with stainless, ie a hard metal, the die is probably a hybrid carbide or some other exotic metal to hold up over time. not to mention use of the press to run it and then finally welding it, burnishing it, cleaning it, maybe etching it.
Now lets do this in america, where minimum wage is 7 bucks an hour, in a skilled area, like a machine shop, you are probably paying closer to 25 an hour. versus china where they are making maybe 50 cents an hour.
Now lets add a store front, all the licenses and the stuff to start a new business. ANY of you who have opened your own coffee shops should know plenty well the kind of crap I am talking about. He has to pay that off, like it or not. Any business, no matter what it is, to be sucessful, absolutely HAS to pass it's costs onto the customer.
Give him a year or two, if the thing catches on and he's selling a buttload of them, THEN he will have bargaining power to say Hey!! you are charging me x for these, i am moving 1000 a month / week / whatever the number may be. How about a volume discount here... or start shopping other places, because now he can honestly tell them. I will need X a month and they have a solid number to work. At that point I bet he can lower his prices a bit.
People pay 5 bucks for a cup of crap from starbucks... is it worth it... no, but they still pay it. Unlike starbucks, This item looks like something that might actually be useful for something besides taking paint off your car or removing love bug guts from your windshield.
You act like his markup is insane, you have NO idea the markup in the 'retail' arena. Those watch batteries you pay $3.99 for. The store gets them for about 20 cents each. That phone battery radio shack sells for $59.99, cost them about 8 dollars. It seems obscene but when you look at all the places the money has to be paid back out to... they are not making that much of a profit overall per item.
just my two pennies... or perhaps I should use steel washers.
Aaron
