Who sells fully finished fiberglass helmets for less?I love anovos but i can see no possible way to justify that price.
Who sells fully finished fiberglass helmets for less?
I don't think the other licensed manufacturers like efx and Master Replicas had much cheaper prices for their fiberglass helmets.I realize the cost of fully finished fiberglass helmet, but I don't think the general public will. When a maker finish a helmet for you, they do it by hand and it takes their personal time and labor. These helmets are being produced in relatively large quantities. Plus, they are manufacturing them overseas so I would think that it would lower the cost a bit too.
Guys, this stuff ain't cheap...And this is coming from a guy who used to avidly sell in these forums, just like half of you.
I think the unspoken costs is in fact we don't take short cuts. We can't. Sure, there are reference pictures and maybe some digital sculpts that we could use, but to date, none of the material compares to our archiving team, simply flying out to a site and acquiring the data we need for our purposes of 1:1 replication. But, you can imagine the sheer amount of money it takes to fly my team of five people out to another country's production site, be there for multiple weeks to scan, shoot, and categorize each individual prop, costume, swatch and detail...of course all of which is done on very specialized, very expensive equipment that we have to finance ourselves. At this point, we hadn't even gotten to product !!
Anyone who has ever dealt with scans will also know, a scan doesn't mean anything and about 10% of the path to actually make it printable. I then have a team sculpt the heck out of this scan, which then plinko's (bounces back and forth) between highly paid digital sculptors and art directors who agree to nearly every single INCH of this helmet before it ever goes to print. Then there is printing cost for something this big and having to master out multiple copies for paint, engineering and insurance. The costs to have sculptors and art directors is as necessary as the acquisition team, but again, we haven't even gotten to manufacturing.
THEN manufacturing starts. All that above requires a lot of money... like a lot of it. On top of it, here's some news, China is NOT cheap anymore. The days of MR type prices are long gone and that was well close to two decades ago now. Look at China's economy...its booming. When economies boom, you know what happens to base labor prices ? They skyrocket which is what we are seeing. I am not going to give an econ course here, but the point is, overseas isn't what it used to be and our prices have to reflect this rise in labor costs. It's simple math. I won't get into licensing costs, but that pretty much rivals manufacturing costs as well.
So when you factor in all these elements, you can be the judge whether something is worth the retail price we put on it. . I can't tell you what to value nor will I try. What I do know is that we do go the extra step in not only making a great replica, but also take extra steps to ensure that the acquisition of reference material and the handling of the data is just as solid as the final product. We do not ever take short cuts and this is the unspoken and uncelebrated aspect of our product. Some of you will get it, some of you won't, but if you do understand what I am saying and agree with it, perhaps you can spread the word too. Our community is still budding and new people keep asking how the costs are justified. They are just looking for answers and you know what you know.
EFX, that's who! $599 for the Wedge X-Wing helmet. A steal at under $600!Who sells fully finished fiberglass helmets for less?
I spent $650 on a static replica plasma rifle from Halo from Tri-Force. It's A LOT of money for me to drop on anything at one time, but I really wanted it. People will pay what they want to for what they want, if they really want it.
Aside from personal opinions or subjective aspects surrounding "value," I don't think it can be argued against Anovos that if the costs surrounding it's production are honest in determining their asking price, then the price of this specific piece isn't really that bad, all things considered...in other words, they're not intentionally inflating a price for the sake of maximizing profits while hiding that actual production costs are lower (lying about it)
For example, it more than likely costs McDonald's a few cents to make a Big Mac, but the consumer is paying $3.99. Is it a rip off? Or are they charging to cover for costs associated with making that burger?
You pay for the product, but the product needs to pay the company back for the labor of it's creation or else it wouldn't be logical in the first place to even go about making the product, as explained above.
But hey, we can just make this explanation more simple- it's called capitalism
Not to mention it has to factor in rent or mortgage on the building, the electric bill, water bill, gas bill, sewage, trash, taxes, insurance, facilities (ovens, registers, freezers), delivery fees, etc.
And that's just for your big mac
Capitalism probably isn't the best way to go about the explanation either as it's not always good. Charging 1000 a pill for a a cancer pill simply because you can for example crosses the line massively. But that was the excuse he used for it.
You want to make a fair profit off it for sure, but you go to far and people won't buy. It can be a very delicate balancing act between successful company and failure.
It's pretty difficult to compare a nice X-wing pilot helmet to a full trooper helmet. The X-wing requires more labor for painting, but less material and labor to make the base helmet. The cost may even out.EFX, that's who! $599 for the Wedge X-Wing helmet. A steal at under $600!
...wait, you didn't mean sell and SHIP, did you? Because in that case I've got nothin [emoji38]
Guys, this stuff ain't cheap...And this is coming from a guy who used to avidly sell in these forums, just like half of you....
If China is no longer cheap why go there? Would it not be better faster to use home grown factories now?