Pricing in the New Year

[Fretworn]

Looks like Pest has his internet privileges back.

[keloooe]

It was from too much use of the Strat!

[robin]

I'll keep buying kits from Adam no matter what happens, value and customer service second to none.

But I am in the camp of "bare bone" kits. I seem to upgrade bridges, pups, pots etc on most of my builds, so if selling a kit without these major components works for Adam and keeps the kits price competitive, they'll get my vote.

rob

[Rob L]

I'm with the bare bones camp as well. Soon as I can I'll be getting the Rick kit. I've got all the upgrades lined up which is pretty much all the hardware and electronics.
If it saves you money Adam and makes it easier I'm all for it.

[DrNomis_44]

@ Adam, I think it's a case of "you've gotta do what you've gotta do", lets hope this year (2015) is a good year for all of us.

[flowman33]

Newcomer here and a Texan, I hate the word Yank, but working closely with a sales driven company in the oil and gas market here is my opinion.

When margins are sagging there are two fixes, raise prices or increase volume. Raising prices is always the riskier of the two as it may inhibit sales. Increasing volume is always a better idea, if you can identify a way to raise your volume.

So here is my experience and I will explain as I go how as a new consumer I felt about the process. My oldest daughter and I have been taking guitar lessons for a year. In August I was in a thrift store and there was an SX strat copy in there for $50, I bought it and being the electrical engineer I am stripped all the electrical guts out of it and replaced them. I actually don't like playing it much and prefer my acoustic. My daughter on the other hand loves it and wanted her own for Christmas.

Being that I sit in a lot of meetings where I have nothing to do for hours on end and I have always been a builder (models, R/C Planes, Golf Clubs, Guns,,,,) the first thing I started researching was guitar kits. It didn't take me long to find that the majority of the kits out there had horrid reviews and the last thing I wanted was a fight on my hands from the start. The kits I did find that people raved about were so high that it made just buying a guitar from the store the only option. While searching Ebay I found some Pit Bull kits. I started some investigation and couldn't find anything really bad being said about them. I also found the website and lurked on the forum a bit.

So there is the background, here is the actually buying experience. I wanted an LP kit, those were out of stock, I looked at other kits it seemed like everyone I looked at was out of stock. I went back to Ebay and looked at what was selling on there, not much but there was a PRS-1TS. I made the purchase and negotiated with Adam to sell it without the hardware and he made things right on shipping.

Wrap it up Flow, what's your point? My point is, I settled for the PRS it is not the guitar I wanted for my daughter. Luckily I am patient and wanted the best chance for success on a first ever build. Your typical American consumer is not going to be that way. It is a big turn off going to a site to find everything out of stock. It really makes me wonder how many sales you are missing. It will also make a lot of store visitors not being return visitors. Their first impression of the store is big selection, little actual inventory.

My opinion, formulated with no knowledge of your capacity, is that there are guitars that would be your bread and butter stock (ST, TL, LP,,,) that I would never want to be out of stock. I would work with suppliers to make sure that I always had those versions on hand to keep volume up and as a gateway into repeat business. I would also have my boutique side but those guitars would be very limited stock or had a fixed lead time upon order.

I think you could definitely increase your business in North America, but being out of stock is a killer especially when your not going to be the least expensive. The PRS you sold me was without hardware and that was the tipping point of making you competitive against typical ebay kits here in the states, especially with shipping costs. Also using google here in the states your three pages in when I search "Guitar Kit". A lot of folks here won't go that deep in google, you might want to look at having an American ISP entry to your store and work on bumping up your search rank so your on the first page and your visits will skyrocket.

Well my meeting is almost over and I have rambled enough. Good luck!

[adam]

Hi Flowman33 thanks for devoting your meeting time to providing such excellent feedback. I agree with all your points. It drives me nuts that we are out of stock of so many models.

Last year our factory in China moved ( without warning us) and that set all our orders back by 3 months. This has significantly impacted our business and, you are right, we are missing out on sales hand over fist.

Anyhoo, we have a full container load of kits which is due to arrive mid February. Once that lands we will have good stocks of all the most popular kits.

When these goods arrive we will also introduce a No Hardware option on all the kits we offer. We're just working out the most efficient way to do that in our e-store.

That's interesting about the Google ranking in the US. We are right at the top or near the top in Australia and I assumed it was the same everywhere. I will get onto that as Googke search is our leading gateway.

We are in for the long haul, so even if it takes us a while to get the stock balance right, I think we're on the right track.

Thanks again ain for taking time to let us know your thoughts.

[wokkaboy]

that's awesome news Ads that you will be selling no hardware kits in the future, sure there's many builders now that want to upgrade the hardware and don't end up using much of the supplied hardware

[metalhead]

Kits without hardware sounds great, I would be keen for that option too. Would that mean you might have options for no hardware or different hardware colours when purchasing, as opposed to the current arrangement where you buy the hardware pack additionally and end up with a bunch you don't need?

[wokkaboy]

Metalhead, not sure what Ads has planned. Maybe he will expand the hardware upgrade packs, where he now has LP, ST and TL in black and gold. At least it means for the small price reduction of the kit you can put it towards some nice hardware