ORIGINAL: Tanque



When any of you folks begin to pull in the prices of the products from manufacturers such as WECOHE, Hermann, Muller and the like that really isn't a
fair comparison. You are speaking about very low volume manufacturers, even when driven by CNC and other technologies the setup time, costs and either
the cnc machining center costs ( to purchase or just rent ) are huge, really huge. And if they're just consuming cnc parts custom made for them those aren't
cheap either. Tamiya's machine costs must be amortized over many product lines over many years so the contributing percentage to overall cost must be smaller.

The smaller companies don't have staff, marketing and distribution costs like Tamiya and to a lesser degree Mato/ Wusan and the Chinese companies.
Products from WECOHE, Hermann, Muller are by their nature more time consuming to produce.

By that measure to me anyway the products of the smaller companies are more worth the price than those of the large corporate giants.

At the end of the day any manufacturer is going to price their product for what they feel gives them an acceptable rate of return on the investment put
into its production. This is a luxury hobby folks ( and sorry I don't see rc tank battling as a 'sport', hobby extension yes, sport, no ) and we don't have to buy them.
We can build from scratch, certainly all the components are there already, tracks, wheels, sprockets and information/documentation ad nauseum. Today's rc tank
hobbyist is spoiled rotten by my measure. All the talk about what's worth what is all nonsense to me. If you want it and can afford it, it's worth it; if you have to go hungry
or damage your family to get it clearly it is not worth it. There's a lot of things I can't afford but want, things I can't justify even if I'm able to buy them. If you don't like the price, move on. Learn one thing- manufacturers are not here to make you happy, they're here for your money; pay up or get out of the way.
When I was actively making and trying to sell my own castings I got no end of grief from folks niggling over the price a $20 raw casting; they never appreciated
the work it took to research, design and make the patterns, prepare and stage the molds and pour the parts. I gave up because it just wasn't worth it. My close friends and family always saw it as an art form and as art one is pretty much free to charge whatever they want.

No flames, no epithets please. Just calling it as I see it.

Jerry