Southampton Pedals (I'm confused about dealer pricing)

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Laurent

Laurent

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May 21, 2008
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#1
The disaster in question is not a new pedal, unfortunately.

Last Thursday I ordered directly from Southampton their new Fifth Gear Overdrive pedal which sounds really nice in the demos. A number of Talkbass members also seem to highly speak of it and the Southampton guys have been skilled at promoting their product here, on TalkBass.

Where the train gets off its tracks is when I see the same pedal I just bought directly from Southampton for $141 (a fair price for a pedal) for $107.07 from Prymaxe.

Prymaxe has it for $129 and they are running a $17% off promo so no tax no shipping so the price gets down to $107.07.

The price difference between Southampton and Prymaxe is 24%. Not a huge deal except when guys like me try to do the right thing and support little guys, it backfires and I find out that the retailers they are selling to are undercutting them. Then if the pedal does not work out, I resell it and I take a bloodbath because the pedals are being discounted.

At one point Southampton has to decide what side of the fence they want to be. You either select the Carvin model which is direct-only or you go the traditional way and go wholesale-only like Electro-Harmonix. Some builders have gone from one model to the other. Wren and Cuff and Fuzzrocious started direct and went wholesale when they got bigger.

I don’t think it sends the right message to try to promote your gear here making full margins while also selling to independent retailers.

Guys like me who buy and resell a fair amount of gear kind of end up getting screwed. Now I just hope the pedal is good so I’ll get some enjoyment out of it!
 
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#2
Sorry you feel that way. Almost ever pedal you can buy at Prymaxe is the same situation.

Check out the Keeley store then the Prymaxe price. You can do that with almost every pedal builder Prymaxe sells for.

Since the actual price at Prymaxe is the same as we sell for I'm confused. They have it listed at $129. The difference is they are having a sale. Which we are currently not having.

I'm not sure what your gripe is? Prymaxe is having a sale and selling at a lower price than we are? That's the definition of a sale. And your concerned when you flip it you will loose because you bought at the regular price?

But thanks for the support. We do appreciate it.
 
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#6
DirtyDuke said:
Sorry you feel that way. Almost ever pedal you can buy at Prymaxe is the same situation.

Check out the Keeley store then the Prymaxe price. You can do that with almost every pedal builder Prymaxe sells for.

Since the actual price at Prymaxe is the same as we sell for I'm confused. They have it listed at $129. The difference is they are having a sale. Which we are currently not having.

I'm not sure what your gripe is? Prymaxe is having a sale and selling at a lower price than we are? That's the definition of a sale. And your concerned when you flip it you will loose because you bought at the regular price?

But thanks for the support. We do appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Well your company charges shipping ($12) and Prymaxe ships for free. That how I ended up paying $141 for your pedal meanwhile Prymaxe charges $107.

The gripe is people who market directly should be the same price or cheaper than their resellers.
 
#8
Laurent said:
Well your company charges shipping ($12) and Prymaxe ships for free. That how I ended up paying $141 for your pedal meanwhile Prymaxe charges $107.

The gripe is people who market directly should be the same price or cheaper than their resellers.
Click to expand...

Again. Sorry you feel this way. Prymaxe ships from th US. We ship from Canada. We really have no control over Prymaxe runs their company.

Also. It is impossible to be cheaper than the resellers. We are the same price. Unless someone is having a sale

It's impossible to be cheaper based on how retailers do business. That makes no sense. They get wholesale pricing by buying in bulk. If you ordered multiple pedals you could also get a bulk discount.

We are a very small company. Really just trying to get started.
 
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#10
Hi Laurent,

I'm really sorry you feel that way. I'll try to explain as best as I can. Bob has already made some good points, but as the founder I'd like to say my piece.

First, you are the consumer and I completely understand your opinion. You have a right to be upset. For that, I'm sorry.

We at SP have set our prices based on the cost of materials, and the time it takes us to make a pedal. We put a lot of effort into R&D and frankly, I believe our pedals are priced very reasonably. You can't get many hand made pedals with a lifetime warranty for $129. If you think our prices are too high, there are plenty of cheaper manufacturers.

Now, Bob and I want to build this company. We want to try and sell enough to make money off this venture and exposure is hard to come by. We rely on word of mouth, demo videos, and online presence to build the brand. So when a retailer with the reach of Prymaxe asks to take our pedal, we are glad for the opportunity to get the exposure.

But, and this is a big but, we made almost no money selling through Prymaxe. We ate our shirts, and the whole goal was for exposure. You are welcome to ask us to match their (frankly ridiculous) prices, but we made $5 off each of those. I spend 2 hours on each pedal, discounting all the design work that goes into them. I will not spend two hours working for $5 unless there is a huge potential benefit, which in this case is the exposure that Prymaxe affords us.

I'm not going to discuss Prymaxe's business model here, because it is what it is. Unfortunately as a small business we have no bargaining power with distributors and we look at any pedals we sell through them as strictly a marketing exercise.

I want to sincerely thank you for supporting us, and buying direct. It is the only way we can survive and design more pedals. Sure, we could go the route of other boutique builders and charge $300 for every pedal and we'd be able to match Prymaxe's discount, but that's not the route we've chosen to go. So again, truly, thank you.

Hamish
 
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#12
dinoadventures said:
Wait, you're complaining that a pedal you haven't even received and played with isn't a good value because there's a sale somewhere? Calamitous disaster. Definitely worth complaining about.
Click to expand...
Good use of the word "calamitous."

The bottom line is no company can have a beat on what price every single retailer is selling their product at every given moment.
 
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#13
Laurent said:
The disaster in question is not a new pedal, unfortunately.

Last Thursday I ordered directly from Southampton their new Fifth Gear Overdrive pedal which sounds really nice in the demos. A number of Talkbass members also seem to highly speak of it and the Southampton guys have been skilled at promoting their product here, on TalkBass.

Where the train gets off its tracks is when I see the same pedal I just bought directly from Southampton for $141 (a fair price for a pedal) for $107.07 from Prymaxe.

Prymaxe has it for $129 and they are running a $17% off promo so no tax no shipping so the price gets down to $107.07.

The price difference between Southampton and Prymaxe is 24%. Not a huge deal except when guys like me try to do the right thing and support little guys, it backfires and I find out that the retailers they are selling to are undercutting them. Then if the pedal does not work out, I resell it and I take a bloodbath because the pedals are being discounted.

At one point Southampton has to decide what side of the fence they want to be. You either select the Carvin model which is direct-only or you go the traditional way and go wholesale-only like Electro-Harmonix. Some builders have gone from one model to the other. Wren and Cuff and Fuzzrocious started direct and went wholesale when they got bigger.

I don’t think it sends the right message to try to promote your gear here making full margins while also selling to independent retailers.

Guys like me who buy and resell a fair amount of gear kind of end up getting screwed. Now I just hope the pedal is good so I’ll get some enjoyment out of it!
Click to expand...


You are being extremely dramatic and I'd suggest you change the thread title as soon as you calm down.

Prymaxe has sales 24/7/365. Tons of retailers have sales, all the time. Where is your indignation toward Keeley/Origin/Fender/3Leaf/Darkglass/etc/etc/etc/etc??????? You need retailers to never sell anything cheaper than you bought it from somewhere else? It's the responsibility of builders, retailers, third parties to ensure the value of your used stuff?

No offence, but remember the BOX Guy? Well, you're the box guy now. Bravo!
 
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#15
Laurent said:
Well your company charges shipping ($12) and Prymaxe ships for free. That how I ended up paying $141 for your pedal meanwhile Prymaxe charges $107.

The gripe is people who market directly should be the same price or cheaper than their resellers.
Click to expand...

That's just ridiculous. Prymaxe utilizes volume to cut their costs, selling multiple pedals from multiple dealers.

How do you not know that the Fifth Gear is a "loss leader" for them right now? They get their hooks in you with this pedal, and you come back and shop for more things with a better margin.

I should also bring to your attention that there are actually many boutique pedal builders, along with their customers and supporters, who refuse to deal with Prymaxe because of them engaging in practices like these that end up making builders look bad, or even worse, effectively forcing builders to sell product at a loss to try and "compete" with one of their resellers. For example, there is a 47 page thread on this very issue over at ilovefuzz:

ilovefuzz.com • View topic - Prymaxe Vintage sucks, but let's talk about food too! :)

So basically, your beef here is with Prymaxe, and not with Southampton. An ethical gent would change the thread title to better reflect the truth of the situation.
 
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#16
A couple of points:

1) If a company is selling both directly and through retail channels, it's usually not in their best interests to compete with their retail sellers - and by that I meant the majors who buy in quantity, not the guys playing the spot market who are looking for discounted products they can mark up. Apple ran into that problem briefly in the '80s when their direct prices on some computers were coming in below what authorized Apple dealers were able to charge. There was a minor revolt and Apple quickly stopped doing that. Which is also why most companies that sell through dealers and directly price their in-house sales at list or close to their list prices.

2) Not everything at Prymaxe is eligible for their coupons. This is the current list of exclusions on their website:

Products from the following companies are ineligible for discounts: 3Leaf Audio, A/DA, Arc Effects, Bad Cat Amplifiers, Barber Electronics, BearFoot FX, Blackarts Toneworks, Blackbird Pedalboards, Boss, Caroline Guitar Company, Cast Engineering, Chellee Guitars, Darkglass, Decibel Eleven, Digitech, DOD, Dr. Scientist, E.W.S. Effects, Earthquaker Devices, Electro-Harmonix, Empress, Eventide, Fender, Foxrox, Friedman, ISP Technologies, J. Rockett, JHS Pedals, Jackson Ampworks, Keeley Electronics, Korg, Marshall, Mission Engineering, Morgan Amplification, Music Man, Nash Guitars, Origin Effects, Paul Cochrane, Pedaltrain, PreSonus, Red Panda, Reverend Guitars, RMC, Selah Effects, Source Audio, Strymon, Suhr, Swart Amplifiers, Tech 21, Voodoo Lab, Vox, Walrus Audio, Xotic, Z.VEX Effects.
Click to expand...

You might notice that better than half the companies most of us would rather get effects from have taken themselves off the eligibility list at Prymaxe. Including such perennial GAS list favorites like: EHX, Strymon, Earthquaker, Keeley, Eventide, Darkglass, Empress, etc.

So as you can see, not every small (or large) pedal builder is allowing discounts by a long shot. If Southampton is good enough to allow discounts, I think they're more deserving of praise rather than criticism because somebody didn't bother to shop around for the best price enough.

That's my tuppence anyway.
 
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#17
40Hz said:
2) Not everything at Prymaxe is eligible for their coupons. This is the current list of exclusions on their website:

You might notice that better than half the companies most of us would rather get effects from have taken themselves off the eligibility list at Prymaxe. Including such perennial GAS list favorites like: EHX, Strymon, Earthquaker, Keeley, Eventide, Darkglass, Empress, etc.

So as you can see, not every small (or large) pedal builder is allowing discounts by a long shot. If Southampton is good enough to allow discounts, I think they're more deserving of praise rather than criticism because somebody didn't bother to shop around for the best price enough.

That's my tuppence anyway.
Click to expand...

Prymaxe will almost always give you codes in private for those brands not covered by their discount codes. I have bought many pedals off that list with discount codes.
 
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#18
nshuman said:
You are being extremely dramatic and I'd suggest you change the thread title as soon as you calm down.

Prymaxe has sales 24/7/365. Tons of retailers have sales, all the time. Where is your indignation toward Keeley/Origin/Fender/3Leaf/Darkglass/etc/etc/etc/etc??????? You need retailers to never sell anything cheaper than you bought it from somewhere else? It's the responsibility of builders, retailers, third parties to ensure the value of your used stuff?

No offence, but remember the BOX Guy? Well, you're the box guy now. Bravo!
Click to expand...

Yes actually most audio manufacturers do it, it's called MAP pricing. Minimum advertised price and when you sign on to become a dealer you agree to not sell below that price or can lose your space as a dealer. All the big brands have it. Nothing new.
 
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#19
markjazzbassist said:
Yes actually most audio manufacturers do it, it's called MAP pricing. Minimum advertised price and when you sign on to become a dealer you agree to not sell below that price or can lose your space as a dealer. All the big brands have it. Nothing new.
Click to expand...

I wish we could do this. Really. But we aren't that big. We had a choice with Prymaxe: sell at 'X' or don't sell at all. At this point, any exposure is worth it for us.
 
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#20
markjazzbassist said:
Yes actually most audio manufacturers do it, it's called MAP pricing. Minimum advertised price and when you sign on to become a dealer you agree to not sell below that price or can lose your space as a dealer. All the big brands have it. Nothing new.
Click to expand...

MAP pricing only works if you are a big company and do marketing and manufacturer incentivized sales. If not, all your retailers drop your product after they have gone through their original orders and never order from you ever again.

I know everyone on here is a marketing expert and all, but, you know, then there is reality...
 
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