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Saito2

Where Tamiya gets their pricing from

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Every once in a a while I notice, what appears on the surface to be, some pricing anomalies in the Tamiya line-up. For example, Why is the Wild One $20 more than the Bigwig? The Bigwig has a higher parts count (being 4wd) plus the addition of bearings and a GT tuned motor and cost less than the more simplistic Wild One. Both are mostly plastic, so its not down to materials. When the were available the Nova Fox and Boomerang were much the same. Pre-MAP, the 2wd Nova Fox ran $189 while the 4wd Boomerang ran $164. Is it down to projected sales? Perceived popularity? From a strictly parts count and materials usage/amount standpoint it doesn't add up.  

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Maybe it's down to commonality of parts? The Bigwig and the Boomerang are from a large family of cars, all similar but evolving over time: development costs are minimal for each new model and many chassis parts are shared, whilst the Wild One and Fox are pretty much one-offs, dead ends: all the r&d and manufacturing costs have to be recovered solely from selling quantities of these cars.

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It may also have something to do with the volumes ordered and manufactured. For something as logistically complex to manufacture and bring together as an RC kit, this will probably have a greater effect on MRP than the complexity of the kit or the amount of material used. Alternatively, the inverse may be true. Tamiya may have been expecting to sell many more Bigwigs than Wild Ones, so they might have made three times as many of the former than the latter. It could then have transpired that they only sold twice as many. If they built 30,000 Bigwigs and 10,000 Wild Ones, then that means they now might have virtually no Wild Ones available on the market, but 10,000 spare Bigwig kits. Given the supply-side excess for the Bigwig compared to the supply-side scarcity for the Wild One, retailers will adjust prices accordingly to get rid of excess stock of the former and capitalise on demand for the latter.

It's probably a bit more complex than that, but you see the basic mechanism.

There may also be other mechanisms at play. Tamiya probably doesn't have all of their models in production at the same time. This means that the supply of different models may not always be consistent, which may also lead to retailers adjusting prices accordingly. In this example, Tamiya may have the Bigwig currently in production, meaning that the supply is good, there are plenty of kits in store to cope with future demand and spares are plentiful. The last production run for the Wild One may have been several years ago, though. The model is still available, but stocks are lower and even though I would imagine there is a surge in demand whenever Tamiya release a new model or a new rere, I would think there is probably always a constant baseline level of demand for every kit. This means there is still demand, but now a relative supply-side shortage, compounded by the fact that models which were bought when the kit was first re-released may now have been in use for several years, leading to an increased demand for spares, replacement shells etc, some of which will be met by people breaking kits and selling parts off individually.

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3 hours ago, graemevw said:

Or, maybe its because the wild one looks better 😉

Well, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or alternatively you're some kind of chassis fetishist. Either way, what you get up to behind closed doors is entirely your own business. I have a Marui Galaxy. I could introduce you, if you like.

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I think it's much simpler: Marketing.  It's all about how much Tamiya can get.  Tamiya is running a business, after all. 

This reminds me of a conversation I had about movies.  I forgot that there was Rocky 5.  Why are they keep making those not-so-great squeals?  But it's got nothing to do with the quality of the movie.  It's all about whether the movie will make money.  Rocky V spent 40 million dollars, and made 120 million dollars.  Expendables 3?  100 million put in, 200 million made.  It's a business.   

What does that have to do with Wild One being more expensive than Bigwig?  I think it's not about how much it costs to make, but more about what people are willing to pay.  Just like story line has less to do with Rocky 5 or Expendables 3.  It's all about enticing enough people to open their wallets.  

So, Tamiya might charge $20 more for Midnight Pumpkin, if it's more popular than bigger Lunchbox.  Whichever entices more people, will have higher sticker price.  

I paid about $110 for Zahhak from Tamiya America.  (That thread "DT02 vs DT03," which prompted me to buy Zahhak was started by you, @Saito2! )  Zahhak is the best performing and best engineered Tamiya 2WD buggy I've got.  But thanks to holy-pinkness, it just wasn't as popular as Wild One. Hence the price. The popular it is, the more they'll charge.  (While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I'm thinking not many beholders liked this much pink. lol... I certainly prefer Wild One, but Marui Galaxy was funny, @Yalson! :lol:)  

jR1LZEp.jpg

 

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3 minutes ago, Juggular said:

So, Tamiya might charge $20 more for Midnight Pumpkin, if it's more popular than bigger Lunchbox.  Whichever entices more people, will have higher sticker price.  

I paid about $110 for Zahhak from Tamiya America.  (That thread "DT02 vs DT03," which prompted me to buy Zahhak was started by you, @Saito2! )  Zahhak is the best performing and best engineered Tamiya 2WD buggy I've got.  But thanks to holy-pinkness, it just wasn't as popular as Wild One. Hence the price. The popular it is, the more they'll charge.

Is the Wild One more popular than the Bigwig, though? For some reason I somehow doubt it. In my experience, the Wild One was never that popular even in period. The Bigwig, by contrast, was Tamiya's top-level model prior to the introduction of the Avante. It came with a Technigold, ferchrissakes, which was just catnip to penniless teenaged enthusiasts. Now I doubt even 10% of those spotty oiks ever got a Bigwig in period, but I bet a lot of them now have the money to buy one and snapped one up when the rere became available. I also doubt many 40-year-old middle managers with money to burn have returned to the hobby, seen the range now available and thoughgt "now I'll get the chance to buy that Wild One I couldn't afford when I was 14". I don't know how many Wild One reres Tamiya have sold, but given it lacks the "halo effect" of being the stuff of teenage legend, I bet they've sold more Bigwigs.

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29 minutes ago, Yalson said:

Now I doubt even 10% of those spotty oiks ever got a Bigwig in period, but I bet a lot of them now have the money to buy one and snapped one up when the rere became available.

Just for the sake of clarity, I am not insulting former Bigwig owners here. I very much class myself as one of those spotty oiks, even if I was never that enamoured of the Bigwig. A spotty oik with a Mid is still a spotty oik.

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I always assumed their pricing model had something to do with a dart board and a bottle of sake...

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11 hours ago, Saito2 said:

Why is the Wild One $20 more than the Bigwig?

At Tamico it isn't. It's the other way around. Personally I wouldn't read anything particularly meaningful into it. Might not have anything to do with Tamiya at all.

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1 hour ago, Yalson said:

"now I'll get the chance to buy that Wild One I couldn't afford when I was 14".

That's me!!

 

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2 hours ago, Yalson said:

There's always one.

Make that 2, I ordered a Wild One yesterday , and it was cheaper than a Bigwig 😉

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14 hours ago, martinjpayne said:

Maybe it's down to commonality of parts? The Bigwig and the Boomerang are from a large family of cars, all similar but evolving over time: development costs are minimal for each new model and many chassis parts are shared, whilst the Wild One and Fox are pretty much one-offs, dead ends: all the r&d and manufacturing costs have to be recovered solely from selling quantities of these cars.

Fox is only a one off , Wild one has the Fast attack vehicle two chassis as most had two cars off a chassis of more .

Who knows , Why . Maybe naming rights or copy rights of the model they used ???. Way too many options and reasons .

Ha could be a dart board with prices on it :P. .... 

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