At 07:33 PM 15/11/2008 -0800, Jerome & Elizabeth Moos wrote:
>I also see the weaker pound is making Brooks Ti saddles in UK almost sane i
>n price again. Over the years, I've bought a good many Brooks saddles di
>rect from UK at times when the price difference covered the shipping, as
>well as a number in the US when the US price including freight was competit
>ive. The window now seems to be open again when direct orders from UK wi
>ll make sense. Brooks need to reduce US prices significantly to protect
>US dealers. That assumes the higher US prices are due to Brooks wholesal
>e pricing, rather than US dealer markups. If the later, then US dealers
>will need to take a bit less markup or lose some sales to UK shops that sel
>l on the net.
I remember when the pound was worth 3 dollars for decades. That was back when Great Britain was still a major manufacturer of cars, motorcycles and bicycles. (Oops, I hit the wrong key and sent this before I was finished.) Even though heavily unionized, British working people didn't make a lot of money and never aspired to own a car or house. British goods were a bargain in North America back then. Then the unions killed British industry but the Beatles went on to save the economy. After that, British entrepreneurship created a new middle class who lived better than American blue collar workers and the price of British goods and the pound rose.
If you've looked at the Brooks website and the Youtube video, you've seen the old guys and ancient machinery that makes the saddles. Obviously, that operation could not sustain itself no matter what the saddles sold for due to the small market for leather saddles today, so we're lucky that Selle Royal bought the company or it would have gone the way of most of the British bike industry. Obviously, the Brooks name and traditional construction carries a lot of weight with vintage enthusiasts and Selle Royal is to be commended for staying in the background and keeping the product line alive, not just grabbing the name and making cheap plastic knock-offs in China. As to whether the saddles are over-priced, that's anybody's guess. No doubt they aren't cheap to make they way they've been made for the last century, so they have to juggle the pricing to make it work. Selle Royal could even be subsidizing the Brooks operation for the prestige og the Brooks name. It's a niche market, where a relatively small number of customers will pay for what they want and accept no substitutes.
John Betmanis
Woodstock, Ontario
Canada