A pre-Xmas shopping rant......

Brilliant at Breakfast makes some good points, so do these folks, and a resource we should all be reading...

As someone who has something of a history of ranting and roaring about the cost of boat and cruising stuff, maybe I should rant a little more...

Of course, as a fairly conservative person (let's just say midway between an Ike Republican and a Johnson Democrat) I both understand the need for a reasonable profit structure and actually think profit is a good thing... So rest assured that I'm not going to go all Bolshoi on you.

A while back I ranted a bit about the silly prices that some marine shops were selling Dyneema slings for, as an example of what an unacceptable markup or profit margin exists in a lot of sailing gear and how the climbing industry by comparison was selling the same item for a fraction of the cost while making a pretty good profit...

Like I said, profit is a good thing! But, at what point does profit left unchecked become something else? We might also factor in that as some companies in the marine sector continue to grow by acquiring other companies that the outcome can be pretty damn close to a monopoly situation where price fixing is the order of the day...

Being a DIY kind of guy, I'm lucky as it gives me a grounding in what materials cost and how much labor goes into stuff. I've also worked in manufacturing and design of products in the mountaineering and ski industries so have a passing acquaintance with what stuff costs to manufacture in bulk and how much it costs to put on the shelves of your local shop. So, if I come across a product that contains $200 worth of material and a few hours of labor that is selling for nearly $6000, well you might say my "Spidey sense" goes into Danger! Will Robinson, Danger! mode...

The thing is, most of us have that consumer "Spidey sense" and if you're shopping for gear and something in your head is telling you that it's "too fucking expensive" there is a 99.99% chance that the product is in fact actually too fucking expensive and, just maybe, you'd be a lot better off not buying it.

Listening to The Pogues

So it goes...