Freestanding climbing wall - price?

[morfa]

I'm just trying to understand the pricing of a free standing climbing wall which has recently been launched. Obviously I'm all for people getting a good price for their work and making a decent living, but the company that make it (which I don't think is a big company) after hyping it up a bit has grumped about being slated about the price. They've reduced the price a little bit, complaining that they only have small margins in the first place. Anyway here it is:

https://powerstationtraining.com/collec ... er-station

I can't see more than about £200 of material in there, some birch ply, pine and a few bits of metalwork. (the 'full' one is nearly £4k)

Personally I've got most of the tools needed, but I'd imagine that a making a jig to ensure the drilling of the holes is done perfectly would cost that much. There's obviously some fairly swanky routing going on (or maybe a laser engraver jobbie?), but you're looking at not that much for the tools. They're based up in Aviemore in the Highlands, so I'd imagine that you could get a cheap workshop for say £500-600 pcm? (I've certainly seen small workshops for similar prices here in Wales) Bit more for heating and power?

So at a vague guess you probably wouldn't even loose much on the first one? The second one would be pure profit after the materials have been bought?

Now, I bet you're thinking, well it's a niche product? It's hard to know how many people climb in the UK, but there's 75,000 members of climbing clubs. Rough estimations have 211,000 people hillwalking / climbing once a month. There are 350 climbing walls in the country and new ones are opening on a regular basis. So there's probably quite a few people who might buy one. So it seems to me that you only need to sell 2 or 3 a month to make money out of it. And you wouldn't have small margins either. I can't see how you would?

Or am I missing something? Any extra costs my back of a fag packet maths is missing?

 

[porker]

I am guessing that the guy that sells this pays another company to make it. It looks good quality materials and would be relatively small volumes so the manufacturer wants to make a decent slice. On top of that this guy wants to make a decent profit plus he's got to market it. So if materials were £200 and £100 labour to put together the parts, slap on a 100% margin, the seller is being charged £600. Add on his marketing overheads and then stick on a 100% markup you're near his figure. These markups wouldn't be far off what I have seen for this type of volumes. I used to work in luxury goods sector (also low volume, decent margin), cost of materials rule of thumb was 10% of the retail cost.
Some of the guys who make stuff on here would know their margins and it would be interesting to see what they think. To me it is expensive but not out of the way for some of these lifestyle products.

 

[Woodmonkey]

That does seem over priced to me for what it is - it's another £275 if you actually want the holds to go on it mind! Funny that they are considered an extra, don't think it's much use without them!
Good idea though, I think there is probably a market for it but not at that cost. Looks to me like it's been cut & engraved on a cnc.

 

[TFrench]

I'd say theres certainly a bit of "prestige tax" on it for having dave macleod's name attached to it! I reckon the market is more climbing centres than home users?

 

[Bm101]

Not a climber myself, did a bit in my younger days when I lived in Snowdonia for a while but very and looking back, dangerously ( :roll: ) casual and being in rope access for however many years I'm probably far more aware of it than Joe Public generally. Seems to me there is a market of climbing wall enthusiasts (no disrespect intended) who have never climbed on rock and never will. Theirs is purely a world of chalk bags and warm dry routes up Mile End Climbing Wall for an hour or two on a Saturday morning. Each to their own I suppose. Wonder if this is aimed at the more affluent end of that market.
One of the offices I clean the windows at on Regent Street has a little climbing wall so they can attempt heady ascents in between phone conferences! (Ok, a little disrespect there, but tongue in cheek. :wink: )
Plenty of market for wealthy amateur enthusiasts. Bit like woodworking.

 

[bugbear]

Seems to me there is a market of climbing wall enthusiasts (no disrespect intended) who have never climbed on rock and never will. Theirs is purely a world of chalk bags and warm dry routes up Mile End Climbing Wall for an hour or two on a Saturday morning. Each to their own I suppose.

Indoor climbing is developing into two things. A variation on the yoga/aerobics class (as you'll know, it's a pretty good way of exercising, for both strength and flexibility), but also a form of gymnastics, were extreme moves that would be DEADLY on a cliff can be perfected and demonstrated.

As an analogy, many Javelin throwers have never gone to war armed with a spear, but that's were it started.

BugBear

 

[Stanleymonkey]

I was expecting a back garden sized climbing structure when I clicked on that link. Not something notice board size!!

 

[Chris Knight]

They obviously went to the same business school as these guys...

http://www.artisanoakcompany.co.uk/for-sale

 

[Bm101]

Indoor climbing is developing into two things. A variation on the yoga/aerobics class (as you'll know, it's a pretty good way of exercising, for both strength and flexibility), but also a form of gymnastics, were extreme moves that would be DEADLY on a cliff can be perfected and demonstrated.

As an analogy, many Javelin throwers have never gone to war armed with a spear, but that's were it started.

BugBear

I understand BugBear, a friend of mine goes to a climbing wall as an alternative to going to the gym. She gets a lot out of it, enjoys the personal challenge and it suits her. But she wouldn't dream of extending that experience to outdoor climbing. Fair play, as I say, each to their own. I wasn't mocking anyone but personally at least I'd at least want to try climbing outside in the elements just because it's so rewarding in different ways that you won't experience indoors. Personally I'd rather have the sun on my back even if it was just the occasional outing.
Was really just pointing out there's a large and sometimes very wealthy market that extends way beyond what would have been the smaller traditional climbing community.

 

[skipdiver]

I am guessing that the guy that sells this pays another company to make it. It looks good quality materials and would be relatively small volumes so the manufacturer wants to make a decent slice. On top of that this guy wants to make a decent profit plus he's got to market it. So if materials were £200 and £100 labour to put together the parts, slap on a 100% margin, the seller is being charged £600. Add on his marketing overheads and then stick on a 100% markup you're near his figure. These markups wouldn't be far off what I have seen for this type of volumes. I used to work in luxury goods sector (also low volume, decent margin), cost of materials rule of thumb was 10% of the retail cost.
Some of the guys who make stuff on here would know their margins and it would be interesting to see what they think. To me it is expensive but not out of the way for some of these lifestyle products.

This is actually cannily close to where i am at. I make a product for a niche market, also from mainly birch ply. This is sold to my customer for £550/650, dependent on final spec, and she sells them on for between £1300/1500 per unit. The materials cost per unit is around £150 and the labour costs make up the rest as they are a bit fiddly and time consuming. I make around 30 per year at the moment but sales are picking up lately. The people that buy this product are are buying into a lifestyle thing and have deep pockets.

It's easy to look at something and start picking it apart cost wise, but i know from experience how much time and effort goes into getting these things to the end user, and if they are happy to pay for it, no one is getting their arms twisted.

 

[PAC1]

I think you are mixing "price" with "cost".
Price being what people will pay
Cost being the cost of making it
The difference is why we bother. Unless your client base say I can get one in a Scandinavian shed for less than the cost.

 

[Eric The Viking]

There is also insurance to consider for the seller: with a product like that there must be considerable risk that the purchasers's friends and relatives could die of laughter if he or she ever revealed the price they paid.

Seriously: it is a supply chain to the final owner, and some of the added value goes in brand-building. People buying this sort of thing could probably make one if they wanted, but they choose not to, instead to spend their time differently.

I suspect pricing comes from what other competing things cost that are equally "entertaining." But that must be hard, after all it gave me a big laugh, and I paid nothing towards it.

 

[morfa]

porker, skipdiver - Thanks for the insight. I'm just curious really, trying to understand why it's so expensive. Worth pointing out that they have dropped their price as so many people complained about the price.

bugbear - There are no 'DEADLY' climbing moves that I'm aware of and that's after nearly 10 years of doing a lot of climbing and a lot of different types of climbing. Most of the people who I know who've died climbing, have either died due to rockfall at the crag. Or been climbing un-roped. I know one person who died when his safety kit failed when he fell off on an E5 in Avon Gorge. But there are no 'deadly' moves that you practice at the wall.

I'd agree that there are a two main types of climbers at the wall, there's the folk who never climb outside, as you say, they use it as a gym alternative and then there's people who climb outside and use the indoor wall as training for climbing. Indoor walls replicate outside very poorly so it's mostly fitness/strength training. Don't get me wrong you can do some technique training, but it's only any good if you do a decent amount of outdoor milage.

TFrench - Yeah you're probably right. I've met Dave Mac once, really nice guy. Not sure it's worth an extra £1000 tho...

Eric - I do wonder if they're cynically aiming at rich Southerners/Londoners who won't have the space to build that sort of thing.

PAC - Good point, I'd not thought of that.

Personally I think it's aimed at the fairly small niche of climbers who are fairly well off, very keen but lacking in time, but who might have enough space to put something up around the house. These are the folk who climb a lot, say 3/4 times a week at the climbing wall in preparation for hard (8a and beyond) routes or hard bouldering, so want something that they can do some training on.