Norman86 wrote:
The US guys are getting it cheaper than in japan!
You wanna tell me they're selling at a loss? ???
You think the price will be consistent in the USA even?
Some years ago I was on holiday in Houston. I went shopping for technical books. I was on a budget and I remember checking the price on each one and keeping a running total in my head. I got to the till, they rang up the sale and it was a lot less than I'd figured. Had my mental arithmetic gone awry? No it hadn't. I checked the till slip and EVERY book was charged at less than the sticker price. I didn't feel hard done by, of course, but I did ask somebody on the shop floor about this because I was puzzled - there was no discount shown on the slip, just a lower price for each item.
What he explained to me was that the price that the publishers printed on the cover was the New York Price. You usually got it cheaper than that out of New York, bar a few other expensive towns such as LA. He said to me I'd get it cheaper still in San Antonio because shop rents were so high in Houston that they had to mark up a bit more.
"Of course," he went on, "Shop rents in New York are higher still. We don't have their costs so we don't charge their prices."
In England most provincial music shops are cheaper than London - even if you're buying an identical brand new item (and prices can vary a lot, with Manchester being pricer than a lot of other places). Why? Overheads are higher in London. It costs them more just to set up a shop and keep it open. Getting stock into London is expensive to these days.
So price comparison is a treacherous business. Maybe the rents are high in Tokyo, or the staff salaries, or the cost of warehousing. You need to sharpen the pencil, look at all the costs, factor in the cost of running the shop etc etc.
