D
Dimitrij Klingbeil
Guest
On 2019-09-12 03:03, Winfield Hill wrote:
Very true, especially for test equipment from Japan.
Often the choice of authorized distributors by the manufacturer is so
poor that the manufacturer ends up with a single boutique near-unknown
distributor per country who charges an outrageous markup and in the end
leaves the manufacturer wondering why nothing ever gets sold over there.
Seen that with a multimeter from Sanwa (PC7000, handheld):
- Japanese list price 28800 JPY (= 240 EUR net plus tax)
- Germany-local prices: almost 500 EUR net, almost 600 EUR total
Whoever resells these seems not to realize that while some people may
actually buy a handheld multimeter for up to 300 EUR (if it's a well
made top of the line model), but a 600 EUR price is at best a bad joke.
Although, nowadays enough enterprising people in Japan have realized
that they can simply buy local items "as an end customer" rather than
as a distributor and than resell them on ebay anyway (with sufficient
profit margins remaining even not being able to avoid double taxation).
Then there are package forwarding services and also so called "buying
agents": small businesses that specialize in buying stuff locally for
foreign customers and posting it to overseas destinations for a fee.
Regards, Dimitrij
P.S. I'm still using my PC7000 as the "main" multimeter. Got it from
Japan with the help of a forwarding service a couple of years ago.
Very true, especially for test equipment from Japan.
Often the choice of authorized distributors by the manufacturer is so
poor that the manufacturer ends up with a single boutique near-unknown
distributor per country who charges an outrageous markup and in the end
leaves the manufacturer wondering why nothing ever gets sold over there.
Seen that with a multimeter from Sanwa (PC7000, handheld):
- Japanese list price 28800 JPY (= 240 EUR net plus tax)
- Germany-local prices: almost 500 EUR net, almost 600 EUR total
Whoever resells these seems not to realize that while some people may
actually buy a handheld multimeter for up to 300 EUR (if it's a well
made top of the line model), but a 600 EUR price is at best a bad joke.
Although, nowadays enough enterprising people in Japan have realized
that they can simply buy local items "as an end customer" rather than
as a distributor and than resell them on ebay anyway (with sufficient
profit margins remaining even not being able to avoid double taxation).
Then there are package forwarding services and also so called "buying
agents": small businesses that specialize in buying stuff locally for
foreign customers and posting it to overseas destinations for a fee.
Regards, Dimitrij
P.S. I'm still using my PC7000 as the "main" multimeter. Got it from
Japan with the help of a forwarding service a couple of years ago.