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Wow - That is a really amazing question. I'll be wondering about it for a while... The following is speculation. On AliBarBar, you can find wholesale pans at

by shubb 13y ago

Wow - That is a really amazing question. I'll be wondering about it for a while... The following is speculation. On AliBarBar, you can find wholesale pans at source in china for $1 each. The price of pi like devices is about $30 dollars. So, why do pans get so much more expensive as they cross the ocean? 1. Cost of postage 2. Protectionist import taxes. Here is Europeans list of things they are thinking of levvying punative taxes on. It's long. http://trade.ec.europa.eu/tdi/notices.cfm http://trade.ec.europa.eu/tdi/notices.cfm 3. Regulatory approval. The burden of bringing a new electronic device to market is pretty high. You need specialist facilities (or to pay a lot of money to a test lab) to prove electrical emissions are fine. This is why so many Chinese designs never make it to the UK. Alibaba is full of lovely android powered arm net-tops, but you note the ones you see in electronic stores are from the same limited range, even the cheap ones. This is why. I presume the same is true for pans. So although designing a pan and bringing it to manufacture is simpler than manufacturing a new ASIC or even embedded computer, only a very few pan designs can be sold in the UK. It just isn't worth bringing another one through approval (unless it's much cheaper). And the approved designs can sell for much more. One hears about western companies keeping as much of the 'value add' as possible out of China and India, possibly because it's so expensive to retrieve money once it's in there. I wonder if this also is part of it.

bigiain 13y ago
"So, why do pans get so much more expensive as they cross the ocean?" My guess? Because pans get sold by experienced companies who recognize that the price of an item is decided by its utility and the amount people are prepared to pay for that utility, not anything to do with the cost of manufacture. The gap between the manufacturing cost and the utility value of an item only lets you choose whether or not to be in the business of selling that item.
- ajuc 13y ago
  In Poland such pans generally cost less then 10 USD (and they are made in China, probably in the same factory). So yep, it seems the prices of a pan are mostly determined by customers purchasing power. Transport costs per unit are probably also higher for pans (cause they're bigger and heavier than arduino).
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  >Because pans get sold by experienced companies who recognize that the price of an item is decided by its utility and the amount people are prepared to pay for that utility, not anything to do with the cost of manufacture. The price of an item is decided by supply and demand. The only way you get a retail price which is significantly higher than the manufacturing cost is a lack of competition. For items like pans this is probably more at the retail level than the manufacturers. I kind of doubt Walmart is buying $1 pans for $45 and selling them for $50.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    No, I think this is where the "pan selling industry" and the "tech toy/trinket selling industry" are different. There's something going on in the "pan selling industry" which results in very little "race for the bottom price" type competition - there are clearly many individual companies importing pans from China, but the "well known retail price" of those pans is ~$30 no matter which retailer you buy it from (within reason - at least within enough reason that all the $30 price-point retailers are still in business). Tech toys, on the other hand, quite often end up in the "race to the bottom" price category - with many innovative and desirable items ending up available from sites like Alibaba or DealExtreme at ludicrously low prices. I think part of it is the audience - the "pan buying demographic" is probably a lot earlier in it's uptake of globalised web based purchasing than the demographic who's buying Arduinos and RasberryPis. Perhaps one day your average mid-western housewife will say "I need a new saucepan, I'll just check Alibaba before I drive to the mall and pick one off the shelf at Walmart - if I can save $20 and only need to wait a week I'll just get it delivered." But like I said - I suspect it's "experienced companies" who are not exactly colluding or price-fixing, but who all know that it's better for _all_ of them to keep pans priced at ~$30 and have everybody make margins of almost $29 per sale, rather than end up trying to compete on price at $5/pan knowing that the total market for pans won't increase just 'cause the prices drop 85%. (And sometimes, you get the evil-Walmart-effect, where someone big enough to absorb the temporary losses chooses to drop the consumer-expected pricing down to $2/pan, waits out until the competition goes broke and vanishes, then puts the prices back up near $30/pan while owning all or most of the market.)
    - 13y ago
jonknee 13y ago
You can buy those same cheap frying pans in restaurant supply stores without a lot of markup. They're shitty pans (very light) and restaurants go through a lot of them. Edit: Here's an example, but at your local store in a sketchy area they'll be even cheaper: http://www.instawares.com/winco-gladiator-fry-pan.wdi-afp7xch1ea.0.7.htm http://www.instawares.com/winco-gladiator-fry-pan.wdi-afp7xc...

by shubb 13y ago

bigiain 13y ago

"So, why do pans get so much more expensive as they cross the ocean?" My guess? Because pans get sold by experienced companies who recognize that the price of an item is decided by its utility and the amount people are prepared to pay for that utility, not anything to do with the cost of manufacture. The gap between the manufacturing cost and the utility value of an item only lets you choose whether or not to be in the business of selling that item.

ajuc 13y ago
In Poland such pans generally cost less then 10 USD (and they are made in China, probably in the same factory). So yep, it seems the prices of a pan are mostly determined by customers purchasing power. Transport costs per unit are probably also higher for pans (cause they're bigger and heavier than arduino).
AnthonyMouse 13y ago
>Because pans get sold by experienced companies who recognize that the price of an item is decided by its utility and the amount people are prepared to pay for that utility, not anything to do with the cost of manufacture. The price of an item is decided by supply and demand. The only way you get a retail price which is significantly higher than the manufacturing cost is a lack of competition. For items like pans this is probably more at the retail level than the manufacturers. I kind of doubt Walmart is buying $1 pans for $45 and selling them for $50.
- bigiain 13y ago
  No, I think this is where the "pan selling industry" and the "tech toy/trinket selling industry" are different. There's something going on in the "pan selling industry" which results in very little "race for the bottom price" type competition - there are clearly many individual companies importing pans from China, but the "well known retail price" of those pans is ~$30 no matter which retailer you buy it from (within reason - at least within enough reason that all the $30 price-point retailers are still in business). Tech toys, on the other hand, quite often end up in the "race to the bottom" price category - with many innovative and desirable items ending up available from sites like Alibaba or DealExtreme at ludicrously low prices. I think part of it is the audience - the "pan buying demographic" is probably a lot earlier in it's uptake of globalised web based purchasing than the demographic who's buying Arduinos and RasberryPis. Perhaps one day your average mid-western housewife will say "I need a new saucepan, I'll just check Alibaba before I drive to the mall and pick one off the shelf at Walmart - if I can save $20 and only need to wait a week I'll just get it delivered." But like I said - I suspect it's "experienced companies" who are not exactly colluding or price-fixing, but who all know that it's better for _all_ of them to keep pans priced at ~$30 and have everybody make margins of almost $29 per sale, rather than end up trying to compete on price at $5/pan knowing that the total market for pans won't increase just 'cause the prices drop 85%. (And sometimes, you get the evil-Walmart-effect, where someone big enough to absorb the temporary losses chooses to drop the consumer-expected pricing down to $2/pan, waits out until the competition goes broke and vanishes, then puts the prices back up near $30/pan while owning all or most of the market.)
  - 13y ago

jonknee 13y ago

You can buy those same cheap frying pans in restaurant supply stores without a lot of markup. They're shitty pans (very light) and restaurants go through a lot of them. Edit: Here's an example, but at your local store in a sketchy area they'll be even cheaper: http://www.instawares.com/winco-gladiator-fry-pan.wdi-afp7xch1ea.0.7.htm http://www.instawares.com/winco-gladiator-fry-pan.wdi-afp7xc...