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These are all of the old posts from the first two years of the forum. They are locked.
Updated: 2005-03-28 by HoloM (the god)
Tom B.

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Post by Tom B. »

It is common for international businesses to sell the same thing thing cheaply in poor countries and priced to the max in rich countries. Without getting into the economic rationale, it is generally agreed that this maximizes profits and is not unethical.
Anonymous

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Post by Anonymous »

"it is generally agreed that this maximizes profits and is not unethical" Not unethical by by the standards of who? The seller making the maximum profit or the buyer being robbed?
Tony

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Post by Tony »

Given the dependency that the world of holography has on suppliers of exotic materials, I'm in favor of supporting profits that keep the suppliers (and distributors) in business. Would you rather buy materials for 1/3 the current price, only to see the suppliers go out of business in a year? When I investigated holography 18 months ago, the one thing that made me take the plunge and actually get back into making holograms was the availability of materials. If I had had to start by making my own DCG plates, I never would have returned to holography. I think the best way to support the hobby/artistic endeavour is to teach it in middle and high schools. If suppliers like Integraf were not around to buy kits from, how could we do this?
Dinesh

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Post by Dinesh »

There's also the side that it's generally more expensive to sell a product in the Industrialised countries because we've been conditioned by a century or more of marketimng psychology. we seem to believe that the value of a product rests more on presentation and packaging than actual functionality. I suppose a good case in point is the sale of software CD's. You have a disc about 4 in in diameter and no appreciable thickness put into a jewel case, for 'protection" (against what?), and then packaged into a box about 8in x 10in x 3in full of bright graphics in primary colors of people with silly grins using said product. Inside the box in stiff cardboard holding the jewel case and perhaps a booklet explaining how to open the box! If this CD were wrapped in tissue paper with some electrical tape and scrawled with handwritten text saying: "Word Processor" would anyone in an Industrial country even look at it? Yet all of this is expensive. Jumping threads for a moment, I've begun to realise more and more that one reason holography is not "making it" in the marketplace is the lack of presentation. There's also a great deal of thought that goes into the fact that in the Industrial countries there's a great deal of competition and "one-up-manship" You can't just get any old shampoo, you've got to get one with "Healthy, Organic Nourishing herbs and aromatic spices from <insert your own exotic location>" just because this is "better" than anyone else's shampoo. You have to have a car that can go 160 mph, even though if you actually went that fast, you'd be arrested!
In the non-Industrial countries, just the posession of the functionality is sometimes more important than the concept of the "better" functionality. Things may have changed, but the last time I was in India (1980) I bought a texct book on Quantum Mechanics. It was bound in a plain cardboard binder and said "Quantum Mechanics". Nothing more. No glowing testimonials on the back cover, no detailed description of the author's family. Yet the book's contents were every bit as good as anything I could get in London. This is cheap to produce and cheap to distribute.
Martin

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Post by Martin »

"Given the dependency that the world of holography has on suppliers of
exotic materials, I'm in favor of supporting profits that keep the suppliers
(and distributors) in business."
The question becomes how this can be done.

"Would you rather buy materials for 1/3 the current price (...)"
...and if it's 1/12 the current price?

"... only to see the suppliers go out of business in a year?"
As a matter of fact we have seen many suppliers come and go over the past 25 years: giants like Kodak, Agfa, Ilford, honorable and small ones like HRT. And probably, there will be new ones like Filmotec and Holotec...

"When I investigated holography 18 months ago, the one thing that made me take the plunge and actually get back into making holograms was the availability of materials."
Sure. As now, 18 months ago, most likely you would have had to chose among Slavich, HRT, Ultimate.

"If suppliers like Integraf were not around to buy kits from, how could we do this?"
I don't know, we may have found another solution at this forum.
But seriously, I didn't mean to attack Integraf. I was simply stunned to learn that a recording plate costs 12 times less in Russia. I find holographic recording materials are too expensive. I think Jeff (Blyth) was right to point to the paradox that nowadays a laser (diode) costs less than a 4 x 5" recording plate.
Frankly, I see no way to explain such a huge price gap between Russia and the rest of the world.



Michael Harrison

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Post by Michael Harrison »

Perhaps Slavich are simple charging what each market will bear.

The US market has not stopped buying their material, so they've no reason to lower the price.

Their competitors are charging more than they are, so there's no pressure there.


Martin

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Post by Martin »

"Perhaps Slavich are simple charging what each market will bear.

The US market has not stopped buying their material, so they've no reason to lower the price.

Their competitors are charging more than they are, so there's no pressure there."

Yes, this sounds like a very likely scenario.
So are we to order directly from Russia?
Dinesh

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Post by Dinesh »

It might be interesting to learn who actually sets the price. As far as I know there are two, maybe three suppliers of Slavich and they all charge pretty much the same. Is this because there was a first company that set the price (randomly? mathematically,according to some marketing formula? in response to believed demand?) and everyone else followed? Did Slavich have anything to do with the price setting? If so, they may not be willing to deal directly. In the following message I suggested that percieved value is regarded as higher motivation for price setting than actual functionality, this is something I learnt attending one class in a series of classes Joy took on marketing and of course common sense supports it. With the absence of any real competition, Slavich seems to have a high percieved value. I've never used Ultima but postings on the forum indicate that it's not easy to get. Colourholographics BBV is excellant for clean holograms, but needs presensitizing. Apparently Integraf carry it, but besides Tom and my one foray (so far!) into color no one else seems to use it. Why, I wonder considering the praise Tom is getting. Of course his use of imagery is great, but the I suspect the cleanliness of his holograms is a factor, too. All the talk of Silver material here revolves around PFG and it's very small grain size.
JohnFP

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Post by JohnFP »

If I remember correctly, the Slavich plates are about the same price (pretty close) as Agfa 15 years ago.
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