www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Carbon-Boom_373219281.html

Bulk buy anyone..

And this board as well:m.alibaba.com/product/559091638/windsurfing_boards_for_sale_58000P065.html

Nice to know how badly we get ripped

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Mark _australia said..
Nice to know how badly we get ripped

Nah, I think it sounds reasonable. The suppliers need to keep stock and need to make some sort of profit as well. I wonder what dramas you would have if you broke one of these booms. At the very least you would have to pay postage.

If the dealers made you sign up to commit to buy their booms and took advance payment, and didn't want a profit, I could understand that 'we are getting ripped', but it doesn't really look like it.

I would also argue this particular boom, even though its sold by a few places here, is not as high end as some of the other brands.

^^ yes but Alibaba shows what the boom "manufacturers" are paying in China.
same boom rebranded costs $1K in the shop here.

I reckon looking at that, most booms cost $200 - $300 at the factory door so yeah we are getting ripped.

I would not think the retailer can cry too much, having to hold some stock when margins are THAT high is not a big ask!

But I acknowledge it is no different to anything else in Australia

You have gotta remember that there aren't very many windsurfers left in Aus. If they were selling heaps of booms/gear they wouldn't have to charge sooo much on top to keep the shop doors open for your convenience.
Its one of the reasons there are not many windsurfing shops here in nsw and qld like there was 20 years ago, they just couldnt keep their doors open with little demand, unless they charged 300% on top.

The same thing,,well sort of, is happening with kite gear but in the opposite.
Demand is sky rocketing but the shops are still struggling because no one will pay for the shops overheads when they can buy for $500++++ cheaper online OS,, well,, unless you are rich and live in WA (cashed up miners with money to burn)

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Mark _australia said..
^^ yes but Alibaba shows what the boom "manufacturers" are paying in China.
same boom rebranded costs $1K in the shop here.

I reckon looking at that, most booms cost $200 - $300 at the factory door so yeah we are getting ripped.

I would not think the retailer can cry too much, having to hold some stock when margins are THAT high is not a big ask!

But I acknowledge it is no different to anything else in Australia

This sort of makes sense though. Most windsurf products have a manufacturer who sells to a distributor who sells to the shops. Every step of the way is trying to make their cut. And let's face it though you rarely pay full retail on any windsurf products.

As for the retailers holding stock. From my experience is only bigger shops like Windsurf and Snow or Windsurfing Perth for example hold bigger numbers of stock on hand. Most smaller shops order in as the requests come in.

Also, my wild guess is this boom is copy. Having seen what Chinese and Taiwanese factories can do in terms of knock off products is mind boggling. Just go to any of the tech malls in Taipei. It's sometimes impossible to tell the fake products apart from the genuine ones. Of course who ever developed the original version had to carrie the cost of developing the product in first place.

And let's talk rip offs. When I have to pay $5.5 for a cup of takeaway coffee in any major Australian city with raw ingredients to make it costing $0.5 or less that $800 sail suddenly doesn't seem so expensive in comparison.

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Mark _australia said..
^^ yes but Alibaba shows what the boom "manufacturers" are paying in China.
same boom rebranded costs $1K in the shop here.

I reckon looking at that, most booms cost $200 - $300 at the factory door so yeah we are getting ripped.

I would not think the retailer can cry too much, having to hold some stock when margins are THAT high is not a big ask!

But I acknowledge it is no different to anything else in Australia

You have no idea about the cost until you actually run a windsurfing shop. I can see from what you are saying you have no idea.

There is very little markup once you take into account freight costs (very High), exchange rates, import duty, GST. Then think about trying to sell 20 Carbon booms you might think it is easy but it is not so if shops have the stock sitting around the shop it is costing the shop.


The Biggest mistake Australian windsurfers make is thinking shops are making lots of money...most are not which is why they are closing down or moving away from windsurfing and focusing on other water sports that make money. Costs are high and it is a very competitive market with a very dog eat dog environment between brands, customers, importers, sponsored sailors, seabreeze and shops.. It is not much fun running a windsurfing shop in Australia

I expect this post will be red thumbed but that is to be expected.

That looks like a quality boom, ideal for open ocean sailing!

I say buy it!

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Mark _australia said...
^^ yes but Alibaba shows what the boom "manufacturers" are paying in China.
same boom rebranded costs $1K in the shop here.

I reckon looking at that, most booms cost $200 - $300 at the factory door so yeah we are getting ripped.

I would not think the retailer can cry too much, having to hold some stock when margins are THAT high is not a big ask!

But I acknowledge it is no different to anything else in Australia

When are you opening your shop?

^^^^It had its grand opening 15mins ago, you missed it.
Has gone bankrupt already lol

Legless I am not having a go at retailers. It is the whole system, the biggest margin is the importers / distributors who have exclusitivity in many cases.
Like examples in a thread here a couple of years ago about an australian product available WAY cheaper online from USA - inclusing postage - than you could buy it in Oz.
Yes small market size etc but I think distributors bung obscene markup on many items.

You will get no argument form me that running a windsurf shop must be bloody hard and have a lot of overheads but I think u need to blame the middle man cos we all know you are not making $600 on a boom.

My point was that you can't blame high prices on retailers having to hold stock like FBRoy asserted. I was countering that as I think the causes lie elsewhere, I was not having a crack at retailers.

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Mark _australia said..
Legless I am not having a go at retailers. It is the whole system, the biggest margin is the importers / distributors who have exclusitivity in many cases.
Like examples in a thread here a couple of years ago about an australian product available WAY cheaper online from USA - inclusing postage - than you could buy it in Oz.
Yes small market size etc but I think distributors bung obscene markup on many items.

You will get no argument form me that running a windsurf shop must be bloody hard and have a lot of overheads but I think u need to blame the middle man cos we all know you are not making $600 on a boom.

My point was that you can't blame high prices on retailers having to hold stock like FBRoy asserted. I was countering that as I think the causes lie elsewhere, I was not having a crack at retailers.

Mark lets go through the facts.

There are hardly any windsurfing importers in Australia anymore and the few that are left often do not hold windsurfing stock. Most shops are importing directly or via a importing group. Like shops Imorters find it hard to make money from windsurfing and have closed or moved to other watersports.

Some importer's refuse to sell windsurfing gear to shops unless they sell SUP's!

There are many offical /unofficial exclusitivity agreement preventing windsurfing shops from certian brands.

Now lets look at this dodge boom:

It is a boom that retails for $500 not $1000 and at $500 it is a hard sell.

A boom that retails for $1000 will cost a shop more than double what the Dodge boom costs.

You need to buy 20 to get that price so you are going to have to transfer to taiwan US$4000 Aus around $4400.00

freight from Taiwan is expensive you are looking at $500 plus for a box of 5 booms you might say well it is cheaper to send by sea unfortunately not for 20 booms. It is only cheaper for very large shipments the landing costs in Australia make small shipments by sea not viable also the time it takes to get to australia by sea . People might say you can get cheaper rates if you are willing to pick up from the airport....big mistake when you get to the airport you will need to pay additional handling fees and employ a broker to clear the shipment through customs it is almost imposible to do it yourself customs no longer deal direct with the public for freight. So any saving you think you will make will be gone.

The shipment is going to be over $1000 so it will attract import duty of 5% GST of 10% and customs fees so the booms are now costing $6500-$7000

Now you have to sell the booms. You need a shop (rent/morgage/or dead asset), you need insurance, advertising, you need a van, you need other stock as it is not a shop if it is selling only booms, staff.

Maybe you can sell on ebay but ebay and paypal fees are stupidly high.

If the customer is not able to get to the shop the cost of freighting single booms around Australia is high making interstate sales even harder.

What happens if the boom breaks.....dodge would likely be willing to replace it but the cost of freight for a single boom from Taiwan is stupid so you would need to buy another 4 to make it worth while but then you are stuck with 4 more booms you heed to sell and selling them has got much harder now as customers know one has broken even if it broken in a 30 plus knot whipe out caused by hitting something people still think it is the booms fault.

So by the time you have taken everyting into account there is no money to be made.....I know I have imported booms from dodge and i can't justify doing so anymore because there is no money to be made.

By the way for those planning to order the booms get the 32 grip the boom arms are much stronger than the 29 grip I have been catapalted into mine at 30 knots and they survived and many others have had big wipe outs with them ( last weekend there was a big wipe out from hitting a carp harness hook was bent straight the clew of the sail was ripped out but no damage to the dodge boom). I have yet to come across a 32 grip boom arms breaking. The weak point on the boom is the plastic mast clamp which can break with a major wipeout. Some have changed their's for a Gun Sails one as it is a perfect fit and much stronger but a new one cost $60, There are also a few other minor issues that you are less likely to get with a $1000 boom.


I am lucky I don't need to make money to keep the shop going. It would be nice to make money but at the moment I am just trying not to lose money.

Unfortunatly for Australian windsurfers I have seen the prices for 2015 gear all go up particularly sails I do not see this trend changing.

Well said and explained!

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sailquik said..
Well said and explained!

+1

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slalomfreak said..
www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Carbon-Boom_373219281.html

Bulk buy anyone..

Let us know how much your swimming has improved then