Why are Surftech boards so expensive???

General Discussion
81

Aloha MrJ ,

when I build a board I put all the love , attention and enthusiasm in the process.

I dream about it , I think about it 24/7 ....

I truely think that a surfer who gets a board from a shaper who has put

so much to the process feels the diffrence.

 

reading what you said shows me that you took my words all wrong so I'll explain myself further more-

when your mom  bakes you your favorite cake  do you like it more than that industrial

sh$%%^T you find in the supermarket ?

most people will answer yes !! and you know why?

not because all the moms in the world are that good of a bakers but because

each and every one of us humans has both connections to his roots and knows to apriciate

somt' made with love.

when a shaper makes you a board , AND IT DOESN'T MATTER FROM WHICH COUNTRY HE IS

you know you get a product that has a direrct connection to the surfing culture and history

and you know it was made FOR YOU with love in it.

ST's are beautiful , they might be good surfboards but the bottom line is not what they are but

HOW THEY ARE MADE!!

the cheap asian industry effects us all and made so many good craftsman stop doing their thing.

that's why we shouldn't support surftech .

I can go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.........and on

If you like compsands , go to a skilled shaper that can make you one.

and please don't twist my words and manipulate them so you have more to say.

it doesn't matter where I'm am from , what language I speak or in what god I believe .. it's always the

smae principal ----->  keep the small ones alive !!  or you'll end up surfing on sponge matts

I'm off to sleep now

good day to all of you on the other side of the globe,

Lee

 

82

This debate has so many angles  -  performance- price -emotion - soul - religion - advertising - tradition........AAAHHHHH!!!!!! .....it gives me a headache !

83

shapers who have a surftech model, they are busier than they  ever were. the branding and market reach has taken thier shape to places it wasnt accesible before. the onflow of work has grown thier business in std pu much bigger too! & if you visit any of the shapers that have a surftech model, thier custom made pu are more expensive than the surftechs on thier racks

84

http://www.surfline.com/video/events-and-promotions/surftech-science_31258

 

warp cloth???  Seems their new way of doing it is the way many have been doing it for years (machine shape to hand finish)?  The power of “branding”…

85

Chicolini, I expect you are enjoying this thread! How about letting us know what your agenda is? I will be up front with my agenda on this thread

The first part of my agenda is that I don’t like protectionism. Protectionism is wrong - it is an attempt to block someone elses produce and deny them a fair market. The thing about protectionism on Swaylocks is that it brings out the worst in people with their Anti-Asian hatred. Its been going on for years and makes this place unpleasant, no wonder we don’t see many Asian builders post here! I sometimes wonder what they think, I’m sure they lurk.

Believe me I do know about protectionism, my wife used to work in a Thai agricultural export agency and she has seen every excuse under the book to block Thai’s exports. The eco card gets played, the labour card gets played the health card gets played… all just excuses based on misinformation to block exports. Just like you tried to play the environmental eco card too. Well it can be played the other way too - Thailand buys huge chunks of electricty from its neighbour Laos which has the “Narm Theun” hydro electric plants, Australia and the US on the other hand are the worst per capita greenhouse emitters in the world (we burn brown coal in Vicco).

My other agenda is I want to see surfboards progress - better design, better quality, better construction. This is what Swaylocks is supposed to be about. A better surfboard needs healthy competition in a fair market.

so whats your agenda? regardless I’m happy to entertain you for a bit longer!

86

thanks for your support Dave, I should have paid more attention to what you were saying about BASE. The market behaviour you describe is called dumping

dumping is the unloading of product (surfboards in this instance) onto the market at a price that is not intended to get fair profit. Dumping is wrong, it flattens the competition who cannot afford to play the dumping game. Sometimes dumping is done to unload overproduction, sometimes its done to unload second quality goods, worst of all its done to deliberately flatten the competition. Regardless of motive it is wrong and breaks down the open market and does not lead to a better board. 

I’ve known you on this message board for years and I don’t doubt your description of the market behaviour.

Yes I also agree with your assessment of the PU market price. I categorise it into approximately 3 segments. There is the backyard, there is niche custom and then there is the market that particularly interests me and the one you are in - Team Rider proven shapes. I completely agree with you that the last 2 segments sell boards undervalued.

87

yes! when I get round to it I hope to draw some graphs of the surfboard demand curve and the  surfboard supply curve which micro-economists are so fond of presenting. I think it can help to explain whats going on here. I don’t have any formal education in this subject, but I have a great textbook to refer to.

88

g’day Lee, you’ve explained yourself, I know where you are coming from - some sort of anti-globalisation, anti-progressive surfboard quasi religeon/philosophy and yes you said it - Asia again …

89

[quote="$1"]

Why are Surftech boards so expensive?

[/quote]

It's like an old movie......a classic that you love so much..... 

...Then someone remakes the movie.....

...you know the story......

...but now the actors are different and the location has changed...

....It's the same but not the same....

....you know the game.....

.........I miss the poly vs. epoxy battle...nothing like a good debate.....

....So....

...Mr Chicolini....

...have you ever considered making your own?????  

For the price of one custom or Surftech you could buy tools ect.........

.....Or would that be too expensive?

 

90

hello again, Lee. I would like to apologise. I was intentionally having some fun with your previous posts. Honestly from reading what you wrote I think you would like Karl Marx and I don’t mean this in a bad way. Although it might on the surface look like I am pushing right wing economics on this thread I am actually well to the left of the average citizen in the western world and I’m not sharing all my views coz it would send confusing signals and I wouldn’t be able to get my point across.

Karl Marx was an absolute genius, he saw globalisation coming long before the rest of the scholars and he truly understood the ugly side of it and yes unfortunately there is an ugly side and I don’t like the way the world is lurching out of control either eg global warming

Here is a quote from Marx the grandaddy of communism.

“The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realise their labour. As soon as the capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale. The process therefore, that clears the way for the capitalist system can be none other than the process from which takes away from the labourer the posession of his means of production”

here is another gem, he is pointing out that high labour costs can produce cheaper goods if productive power is higher.

“The fact I have before mentioned that high-priced labour may produce cheap, and low-priced labour may produce dear commodities, loses therefore it paradoxical appearance. It is only the expression of the general law that the value of a commodity is regulated by the quantity of labour worked up in it”

The reasoning leading up to this isn’t so easy to follow, but he had such a fresh view of looking at things and it is part of an argument for reducing inhumane 12 hour days. About half the Thai workforce have to endure a 6 day week at the moment, but things are getting better and the paradoxical thing about this world is that the hardest I have ever worked is when I was in Silicon Valley USA - it was a fantastic experience, but my word the pressure! I was in work up to 7 days a week but I had an arrangement with my boss such that I could turn up late on surfing days. Very different culture to Aussie - dress totally casual - running shoes and jeans standard. There would be a kitchen with 3 types of free coffee, food supplied, pizzas if we worked late - what they were trying to discourage us from going home. But no complaints, compared to my present job I was well paid.

Absolutely I believe everything I wrote previously this thread, but my actual thoughts are more complicated. I’m all for fighting for the value of the ordinary persons labour wherever they live. Really its just the anti-Asian sentiment I want stopped which has become synomymous with protectionism on Swaylocks, so for the sake of clarity I will continue to argue a narrowed line of thought.

91

hey mr j      i am not trying to have a blue but i would be very interested in your veiw

of the diastrous bill trying to go through  at the moment

 

 cmon mr j     this tax is going to change every thing we know whats your slant

 

promise i wont go offClub Me 1

92

ok huie, my actual view is one of global disgust rather than a view on the bill itself. The bill is hopelessly watered down and ineffective, because of the worlds inability to co-operate with each other. Its therefore the disjointed world that causes so much political infighting on this issue in Australia. I think for now world trade is going to have to carry on its path to increasing free trade and just slug it out on the free market, but things like global warming should not be seen that way - as every country trying to do just enough to make themselves look good, but not enough to fix the planet or wait for the other to make a move.

ok you put me on the spot, so I’ll say yes. Not coz I think its a good bill, but it seems that things will just keep getting put off until the perfect bill arrives by which time things will have got even more out of control. It will cost us but I think our economy will handle the extra load unilaterally due to the way we are riding the global crisis better than others. Although if China’s economy stalls we will be stuffed as we export so much resources to them.

An optimistic scenario would be that other countries will also implement equally hopeless bills, then a bit of world cooperation would happen, the cooperation would accelerate and then the plan could be fixed up everywhere. I think its worth a shot with attempting to get a worldwide ETS going - it might not work, but looks to my simple understanding a scheme which can be implemented in a more uniformly global manner than some other schemes.

I’m not at all clued up on the situation and I haven’t attempted to follow the detail at all. I’ve actually been more absorbed with surfboard flex on swaylocks recently. whats your view?

93

oh jez mate if i was to go of i would get branded craz

 but as i understand it we would be borrowing mony from china to hand straight back

taxing one country to the hilt to give to another to continue buisness as usual dont add up

i am with u on the state of the planet  but look at us here diging up coal 24 sevn that aint goona stop

just walk out my back door to see what they have done to the big island i pay an enviroment tax but no one does anything

fish kills dead dugongs logerheads it just keeps going on and on wait till i have a cup of tea with a drop of rum  haaa’’

 if you get time have a laugh at this you need to listen   hope i dont offend anyone

**http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qyfeJbfV30
**

94

Mr J ,spare me the graphs .....PLEASE  !!!!    I hate graphs ! 

THIS POST EDITED !

 

 

95

[quote="$1"]

Shouldn't we all be baking a turkey rather than basting this one. at least in gringolandia

[/quote]

LMFAO.

Happy Thanksgiving.

96

hey kayu  click that video i put up have a listen

97

Shalom MrJ,

first of all I accept your appology- peace.

I'm having a hard time with the capitalist system.

we're experiencing tons of shit from the corupted goverment and specially Haifa's mayor.

ruining our beaches , building concrete monsters over green mountains and hills and the list goes on for every aspect of life.

I'm not always 100% down to what I feel and how I want to deal with it and therefore I often find myself in a debate

learning a lot about what I feel and what's really going on only after things have been said and get some form.

as I said B4 , it's not about tufflites at all and not even about Asian market .   it's how we lose control about so many

beautiful things that are now days driven out of money making and industrialism.

BTW , Israel is in Asia after all  :)

Thank you and everyone here for the read and sharing your thoughts,   I've done my math... ,  lets stop arguing and go make better , stronger, lighter boards

and give the big industry a real fight.    If this is what needs to be done ...shall it be.

 

good day

Lee

 

98

ok, here we go again!

Yes, my wife teaches marketing and says “branding” is important, but its not everything. Branding is a fair and just tool in the free market.

regarding warp cloth and their “flexlite”, if you have read the surf science that KC and myself have come up with on the flex thread you will see that I’m pushing the theory that for high performance ie max speed, max responsiveness stiff is best. I actually believe this at the moment although I still consider that thread to be work in progress. So no I wouldn’t buy their flexlite.  tufflite1 and tufflite2 please.

 

Ok Durbs, i’ve made my agenda on this thread clear, I want the workers in Cobra international to be able to do their job without hatred. I also want to enjoy the product of my choice made in a factory I am morally comfortable with. You tell me your agenda, why did you post that?

99

cheers Lee.

 

Mike

100

from another hate thread

http://www2.swaylocks.com/forums/meanwhile-hall-justice-another-little-factory-china

 

Mike, this is the sort of hate I don’t like