[Elecraft] European Elecraft prices

[Julian (G4ILO)]

I entirely agree. Interestingly, so does Peter Waters, boss of the UK's 
biggest ham radio dealer, Waters and Stanton. Peter built and operates a 
K2, and in his review of it in his company's 2002 sales catalogue he 
explains why his company doesn't sell it. He wrote: "Elecraft have priced 
[the K2] for direct sales only and no local distributor could afford to 
give the level of backup that Elecraft give." If you compare, say, MFJ 
prices here with those in the States the markups are about the same, if not 
more so, and I'd guess that MFJ *do* price their products to allow for a 
dealer markup. So I think the main reason W&S didn't decide to add the K2 
to their product line was not qualms about charging what many of us here 
would call "rip-off prices", but simply the thought of the potential cost 
of having to fix people's badly built kits.

I don't believe that DL6FI is ripping people off. The trouble is that we in 
Europe are saddled by too much legislation brought in by the EU. Built 
equipment has to be EC tested (which is why you can't buy Ten-Tec gear 
here; the market is deemed too small for it to be economic to do it) and 
dealers have, as Peter says, to provide a 2 year warranty. Even employment 
legislation here makes the overheads of a small business (which any ham 
radio business inevitably is) much greater. I'm sure that's why there are 
so many thriving small ham radio businesses in the States, whereas over 
here all you have are one man businesses run as a paying hobby in the 
evening after getting home from the day job.

I admit, as one of the earliest UK buyers of a K2, I was slightly concerned 
about what would happen if I had a problem I couldn't solve. But to anyone 
now who has such qualms I would say not to worry. When I feared I had 
messed up my KSB2 doing a mod, I had several offers from other K2 builders 
here in the UK to sort the problem out for me. I didn't need their help in 
the end, but it's reassuring to know that such a local support network 
exists. There's probably no reason for anyone in Europe to have to send a 
K2 board back to the States, so who needs a local dealer warranty?.

I think that the Internet has made the need for local sales offices largely 
redundant. as long as you have a supplier like Elecraft which is fully 
prepared to deal with international shipping. As for the suggestion that 
language differences might be hampering sales, perhaps Elecraft should 
consider having its web pages translated into French, German and Italian?

73,
--
Julian, G4ILO. (RSGB, ARRL, G-QRP, K2 #392)
G4ILO's Shack: http://www.qsl.net/g4ilo

"Tony Wells" <t.wells@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

I'm inclinded to agree with the original calcs,  price and delivery
analysis -  most people pay by credit card and the delivery is about 4 
days,
shorter if you pay more.

VAT has to be paid in EC on all items, whether coming from Germany or  US,
or anywhere else and I think that was taken into account in the calcs.

What I am interested in, with my commercial, self-interested hat on, is 
what
added value a European distributer/agency can add to the supply and support
for elecraft kits. I can't see much added value myself, but perhaps Peter
might be able to help on this. Perhaps it is a language thing? Perhaps it 
is
an issue for hams who are not Internet users? Maybe there are a lot of
people in Europe who are not comfortable speaking or typing  English?

The area of added value I can see is not Elecraft-specific, is to provide a
place for the general user of qrp  kits - which is good I think. However,
there is a kind of circular argument here, in that if a qrp user gets an
Elecraft kit, they are IMHO very unlikely to buy another qrp kit again,
except another Elecraft! And if it's cheaper to buy from the US then.....