Norman86 wrote:
in the end, it all comes down to price anyway.
If people are prepared to pay R1500 for a boss pedal, why not give them a better quality, custom made pedal for less as a choice?
Marketing too... people dont know they need something unless they know it exists!
Most people end up buying boss bacause they know its there, its shoved down their throats as there arent alternatives.
Some people are brand concious, and it's not just ignorance. You buy a Boss pedal you have a comfort zone that it's tried and trusted, that there will be backup, that you can get manuals and technicians can get circuit diagrams and that there'll be somebody appointed by Boss to do repairs on their behalf. Same with Fender or Ibanez or any well known brand you can think of.
in my dealings with music shops, they arent willing to have to custom order something thats not in stock, and end up trying to flog whatever they do have in stock on the anassuming customer, because "its the same thing anyway"..
and later it gets sold because it isnt.
Yes. Well... not unless you're going to give them some money up front. I walk into a store, ask them if I can get a Z-Works Fabuliser and they quote me a price, and I say go ahead and they say come back in three months. Well, that's a long time for my ardour to die down and what the heck - there's other stores around, so I just won't show my face there for a while and that Fabuliser is their problem. Now, dear reader, you might not operate like that, but some other folks do and it can mess with a body's cash flow.
It's an order from a company they don't usually deal with, so they get no volume discounts. They have to pay shipping, get the item through customs and into their shops. It's a lot of hassle and unless the customer is going to give them some of the folding stuff up front it's more hassle and risk than it's worth. Plus you sold it and took some profit on it, so you have to provide some kind of back up - or tell the oke no guarantee, no backup unless you want to ship it back to the builder at your expense, and hope he takes that kindly and that he's not going to flip his lid when he comes back 6 months later with a dead pedal and you say "I did tell you..."
I'd just take the easy option and say "well we've got this Boss pedal which is near-as-dammit the same thing, and it's a Boss, and we have stock right now."
If there wasnt a market for quality, boutique pedals, oline stores like proguitarshop and prymaxe vintage wouldnt be getting south african orders, because we'd all be happy with the boss pedals of the world!
There IS such a market, but I doubt a lot of high street stores are interested in it. The guys you mention are, and they are the guys to deal with if if you don't want a Boss or a Line-6 or a Zoom or an Electroharmonix pedal. It's a boutique business, and by definition every shop will NOT stock that gear. For most dealers, unless they can get this kind of pedal on consignment (they pay if and when they sell) then it's too risky a proposition for them. That home-made pedal by some guy nobody has heard of will sit on their shop floor whilst the Boss pedals walk out as fast as they come in.
