3 ms·

Definitely rings true of tech enthusiast niches. Mechanical keyboards and retrocomputing may not offer huge volume, but it can probably offer fat margin.

by jchw 5y ago

efitz 5y ago
It's true in almost all commercial transactions. A price is a message communicating the value of the thing to potential buyers. Also, value is subjective. Anecdote: I used to work for a large software company. A long time ago they had a product which had a competitive feature set to the industry leaders in the space, but was a poor seller. It turns out that the price was so low (<10% of the market leader) that potential customers assumed that it was not a serious competitor. Raising the price significantly boosted sales. Years ago I owned a boat. Everything for boats is more expensive than equivalent non-marine items. At first I thought that was because designing things for marine environments required better materials and engineering. Then I realized that most people who own boats are at least moderately well-off, and that the price was what they were willing to pay, not what it cost to manufacture. This taught me that if I ever start a business, I will target rich people.
- imtringued 5y ago
  According to hacker news, rich people don't have any money. They only have stocks.
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
It is much less of a focus now, but I for a long time I wanted to have a business that made me a lot of money. I always focused on trying to make useful stuff, but I sure did wonder about making decent stuff and throwing in a bunch of marketing to charge 10X the normal price! It is one interesting strategy. But then I learned business is SUPER hard (especially starting from zero) and I make great money doing engineering!
tialaramex 5y ago
An important distinction is that the mechanical keyboard and retro computers actually are meaningfully different. If I take a cheap mass-produced keyboard, like the "China Resource Semico Co., Ltd Keyboard" plugged into this random desktop PC, and I put it in a nice box and tell you it costs $500, presumably people who buy expensive mechanical keyboards would notice that the keycaps are cheap plastic with stickers, there are no mechanical switches and so it doesn't have the right "feel" and so on. It costs $500 because that's what I charged, but most people don't believe it's worth $500. I was looking to sort out a good keyboard and then the pandemic started, and so I just bought the cheapest product I could source very locally (from a supermarket about 5 minutes walk) rather than incur additional risks or delays. And of course this keyboard does work so the impetus to buy a good keyboard receded. But I'm under no illusions that it's just as good, the letters A, C, E, L, N, O, and S are already rubbing off and the left shift key is already significantly worn because they used a cheap plastic! The problem with situations like this "Audiophile approved" cable is that it isn't even meaningfully different let alone better. Unfortunately in a society that loves Veblen goods this is hardly the exception.
- jchw 5y ago
  This is absolutely true, but I do not think it is merely limited to audiophile gear. The thing is, I don’t think overpriced audiophile gear is really that awful, its just awful value. The adage that there are no bad products, only bad prices is obviously flawed, BUT, sometimes it really is just bad prices. This cable is probably pretty good. For the price, it ought to be, because even the best cable money can buy would probably leave a fat margin at this price. Likewise, good mechanical keyboards can sell for a lot. Thousands. It’s no freakin joke. Maybe the prices haven’t gotten as meaninglessly inflated as audiophile gear, but it’s in a similar order of magnitude imo. We’re only talking about the extremes after all; a good pair of Audio Technicas is never going to be a ripoff, but that doesn’t mean someone around the corner isn’t trying to sell snake oil. Maybe audiophile gear really is different, but if it is I suspect it has something to do with the audience its marketed for and where the money comes from rather than an inherent difference in the markets.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
the_only_law 5y ago
Retrocomputing is horrid because every idiot things their worthless crap is worth something. I can’t tell you how many “unknown soviet terminal keyboard” I’ve seen people ask hundreds of dollars for.
- jchw 5y ago
  I hate the prices on rare items, that stuff sucks. The price of things is far above what people should be willing to pay, but sellers have no incentive to sell for less and buyers have no choice if they ever want to mess with old computers. Frankly, old Japanese computers are easier to get a decent deal on because for one reason or another, Yahoo! Japan Auctions tends to give pretty damn fair prices. What I’m talking about though is actually not the second-hand market, but the very interesting market of making new retro-computing goods. TexElec has some good examples of said things; accessories or expansions for old computers, or hell, sometimes even successors or recreations of them, like the Vampire V4 standalone, which from my reading is meant to be a successor to the Amiga 4000. There’s always emulator boxes like the “mini” consoles that have been popular, but frankly I think those have firmly left “niche” territory by now, and only some of them are marketed at the niche. Nowadays the niche markets seem much more palatable to more expensive, but somewhat more versatile FPGA based emulation. (Well, maybe that’s not fair; software emulation can do things FPGA based emulation can not, but FPGA based emulation can do things that software emulation can’t do either, and you can already get software emulation on most computers, phones, and game consoles anyways. It definitely adds some value for being unique.)

Definitely rings true of tech enthusiast niches. Mechanical keyboards and retrocomputing may not offer huge volume, but it can probably offer fat margin.

by jchw 5y ago

Definitely rings true of tech enthusiast niches. Mechanical keyboards and retrocomputing may not offer huge volume, but it can probably offer fat margin.

efitz 5y ago

It's true in almost all commercial transactions. A price is a message communicating the value of the thing to potential buyers. Also, value is subjective. Anecdote: I used to work for a large software company. A long time ago they had a product which had a competitive feature set to the industry leaders in the space, but was a poor seller. It turns out that the price was so low (<10% of the market leader) that potential customers assumed that it was not a serious competitor. Raising the price significantly boosted sales. Years ago I owned a boat. Everything for boats is more expensive than equivalent non-marine items. At first I thought that was because designing things for marine environments required better materials and engineering. Then I realized that most people who own boats are at least moderately well-off, and that the price was what they were willing to pay, not what it cost to manufacture. This taught me that if I ever start a business, I will target rich people.

imtringued 5y ago
According to hacker news, rich people don't have any money. They only have stocks.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

It is much less of a focus now, but I for a long time I wanted to have a business that made me a lot of money. I always focused on trying to make useful stuff, but I sure did wonder about making decent stuff and throwing in a bunch of marketing to charge 10X the normal price! It is one interesting strategy. But then I learned business is SUPER hard (especially starting from zero) and I make great money doing engineering!

tialaramex 5y ago

An important distinction is that the mechanical keyboard and retro computers actually are meaningfully different. If I take a cheap mass-produced keyboard, like the "China Resource Semico Co., Ltd Keyboard" plugged into this random desktop PC, and I put it in a nice box and tell you it costs $500, presumably people who buy expensive mechanical keyboards would notice that the keycaps are cheap plastic with stickers, there are no mechanical switches and so it doesn't have the right "feel" and so on. It costs $500 because that's what I charged, but most people don't believe it's worth $500. I was looking to sort out a good keyboard and then the pandemic started, and so I just bought the cheapest product I could source very locally (from a supermarket about 5 minutes walk) rather than incur additional risks or delays. And of course this keyboard does work so the impetus to buy a good keyboard receded. But I'm under no illusions that it's just as good, the letters A, C, E, L, N, O, and S are already rubbing off and the left shift key is already significantly worn because they used a cheap plastic! The problem with situations like this "Audiophile approved" cable is that it isn't even meaningfully different let alone better. Unfortunately in a society that loves Veblen goods this is hardly the exception.

jchw 5y ago
This is absolutely true, but I do not think it is merely limited to audiophile gear. The thing is, I don’t think overpriced audiophile gear is really that awful, its just awful value. The adage that there are no bad products, only bad prices is obviously flawed, BUT, sometimes it really is just bad prices. This cable is probably pretty good. For the price, it ought to be, because even the best cable money can buy would probably leave a fat margin at this price. Likewise, good mechanical keyboards can sell for a lot. Thousands. It’s no freakin joke. Maybe the prices haven’t gotten as meaninglessly inflated as audiophile gear, but it’s in a similar order of magnitude imo. We’re only talking about the extremes after all; a good pair of Audio Technicas is never going to be a ripoff, but that doesn’t mean someone around the corner isn’t trying to sell snake oil. Maybe audiophile gear really is different, but if it is I suspect it has something to do with the audience its marketed for and where the money comes from rather than an inherent difference in the markets.
- tialaramex 5y ago

the_only_law 5y ago

Retrocomputing is horrid because every idiot things their worthless crap is worth something. I can’t tell you how many “unknown soviet terminal keyboard” I’ve seen people ask hundreds of dollars for.

jchw 5y ago
I hate the prices on rare items, that stuff sucks. The price of things is far above what people should be willing to pay, but sellers have no incentive to sell for less and buyers have no choice if they ever want to mess with old computers. Frankly, old Japanese computers are easier to get a decent deal on because for one reason or another, Yahoo! Japan Auctions tends to give pretty damn fair prices. What I’m talking about though is actually not the second-hand market, but the very interesting market of making new retro-computing goods. TexElec has some good examples of said things; accessories or expansions for old computers, or hell, sometimes even successors or recreations of them, like the Vampire V4 standalone, which from my reading is meant to be a successor to the Amiga 4000. There’s always emulator boxes like the “mini” consoles that have been popular, but frankly I think those have firmly left “niche” territory by now, and only some of them are marketed at the niche. Nowadays the niche markets seem much more palatable to more expensive, but somewhat more versatile FPGA based emulation. (Well, maybe that’s not fair; software emulation can do things FPGA based emulation can not, but FPGA based emulation can do things that software emulation can’t do either, and you can already get software emulation on most computers, phones, and game consoles anyways. It definitely adds some value for being unique.)