Saturday, April 17, 2004
How much is too much? (Ripped Off in NZ I)
It seems 190 dollars is a reasonable price to pay for an All Black jersey according to....those selling them.
I remember buying an All Black jersey while I was at university for a friend of mine who was turning 21 and moving overseas. As I recall it was 120 dollars and the year was 1996. It was a big financial commitment for me THEN. Now I'd need a bank loan.
Now check this out...
Adidas managing director Craig Lawson said there was "a very significant difference in the quality of the (All Black jersey) garment". Adidas also had to pay royalties to the Rugby Union as the maker of the official All Black gear sold to fans. The 2003 All Black jersey is made from a special imported fabric, "similar" to the fabric used by the All Blacks in the past two years. "If you compare that to a cheap black jersey, with a white collar and fern, there is no comparison – there is a visible difference," Mr Lawson said.
What freaking material is worth nearly two hundred bucks for a couple of metres of it?! Is there gold woven into it? Angel dust sprinkled on to it? Does it make you invicible? (obviously not....2003 WC). It's probably worth noting that it's not exactly the same material either, only "similar". Of course there are the other things which bump the price up, like the 5 dollar manufacturing cost in Asia (or perhaps 30 dollar cost in NZ where the same Asians are probably making them in South Auckland factories). Then you throw in the mega bucks the NZRFU want to make from each jersey for doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the manufacturing and marketing process and the price can start to rise.
Apparently they sell "thousands" of the jerseys each year, although it would be nice to know if it was 2,500 or 8,500. If it's the former and the NZRFU gets 50 dollars per shirt then they are making 125,000 dollars a year. Whoop dee doo. If it's the latter then it's 425,000 a year which they make (almost enough to pay half Jonah Lomu's wages for a while there).
It's not enough that they fleece people who could, and should (if not for the greed of Adidas and the NZRFU) be paying a lot less for the shirt though. They now want to take things further.
The Rugby Union announced this week that it was filing a trademark application for black rugby jerseys or even "black casual shirts" made in the style of a rugby jersey, with a white collar and a "fern device". All three elements were needed for a trademark infringement. The Rugby Union reckons it is missing out on merchandise royalties worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars", maybe even into the million-dollars-plus range, because of the fake jerseys on the market.
"The national game is now big business and big business is always going to protect its interests," Mr Russell said.
It was possible to buy "any number" of imitation rugby jerseys and the union was trying to collar the market for anything that looked like an All Black jersey.
This type of thing really bites my crack for two reasons. Firstly is it not possible that the reason that people are buying cheaper imitation jerseys, t-shirts or whatevers is that THEY CAN'T AFFORD THE REAL THING?!. Simply eliminating any cheaper alternatives means that people who obviously like the AB's now can't buy anything and probably get sodded off. If Adidas and the NZRFU want a piece of this market then start offering official alternatives.
The second reason is that New Zealands sporting colours are black and white. Each and every team or individual who is representing NZ wears these colours with verying designs. And the silver fern goes along with it. Would the rugby union like to strip all our olympians naked at the Athens Olympics later this year because they are 'wearing All Black jersey' imitations? Go fall down a hole.
I bought a black shirt a year or two ago because I wanted to wear a black shirt with a silver fern and New Zealand written onto it in my travels abroad (and cos I get sick of being called an American when I'm in Korea). But gee, if I want to wear black with a silver fern on it in the future I'll have to pay 190 bucks. Not freakin likely.
Also as Consumer Insitute's chief executive David Russell says...
Official All Blacks T-shirts, selling for up to $50 each, could be brought into New Zealand for just $3 to $5, Mr Russell said. T-shirts had "a buy-in value of $3 and $5 base price, delivered in New Zealand", he said. "You would get them into the shops for less than $10," he said, including printing. "People are paying far, far more for the image than the base product," Mr Russell said.
Check out those mark ups! As I said earlier, why don't they put these things on the market for cheap, affordable prices, like say 20-30 dollars. Surely they'd sell a fair chunk more, they'd have more people wearing them around thus getting the flow on marketing effect and they'd make more people happy. Oh that's right, I forgot they couldn't give a stuff about Joeline Public, they're in it for the mullah.
And the results of the poll by stuff.co.nz say it all really.
Eight hundred and fifty one say they wouldn't pay 190 dollars for the jersey and only 70 say they would. Roughly 7 percent. I wonder when those seven percent finished waxing their Jaguar in the driveway before coming in to play on the net?
We are talking about the internet community in NZ as well. Not exactly the most broke sector of society in most cases. I'd hazard a guess that roughly 2-3 percent of NZers consider that a fair price to pay and as suggested in the story, it's wealthy Asian tourists doing a fair amount of the purchasing. Aren't most other things in life considered a fair price? To get a rating of a few percent says a lot in my opinion.
I'd love to know how many NZers walk into a store when there are no test matches on (therefore no real hype around) and buy an All Black jersey. My guess is you could count the number sold on one hand in the entire country per day.
I'm glad I bought my Warriors shirt when it was only 120 dollars in their inaugural season though. Their shirt prices have been going the same way.
Give us sport lovers a break ya greedy &^%&$#'s.
Actually as an afterthought...any of you remember all the "Be the Reds" t-shirts that everybody was wearing in Korea during their World Cup campaign in 2002? I do cos I bought about ten of them for 50 dollars. No they didn't fall off the back of a lorry or get discounted. That's what they were. About 5 dollars each. And we're not talking about Bangladesh here. This is a country where the average wage is around 2,500 NZ a month.
Even the Korean national team shirt is only about 90 NZ dollars, and it's made of 'special' material as well. But then again, it is pink :(
I remember buying an All Black jersey while I was at university for a friend of mine who was turning 21 and moving overseas. As I recall it was 120 dollars and the year was 1996. It was a big financial commitment for me THEN. Now I'd need a bank loan.
Now check this out...
Adidas managing director Craig Lawson said there was "a very significant difference in the quality of the (All Black jersey) garment". Adidas also had to pay royalties to the Rugby Union as the maker of the official All Black gear sold to fans. The 2003 All Black jersey is made from a special imported fabric, "similar" to the fabric used by the All Blacks in the past two years. "If you compare that to a cheap black jersey, with a white collar and fern, there is no comparison – there is a visible difference," Mr Lawson said.
What freaking material is worth nearly two hundred bucks for a couple of metres of it?! Is there gold woven into it? Angel dust sprinkled on to it? Does it make you invicible? (obviously not....2003 WC). It's probably worth noting that it's not exactly the same material either, only "similar". Of course there are the other things which bump the price up, like the 5 dollar manufacturing cost in Asia (or perhaps 30 dollar cost in NZ where the same Asians are probably making them in South Auckland factories). Then you throw in the mega bucks the NZRFU want to make from each jersey for doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the manufacturing and marketing process and the price can start to rise.
Apparently they sell "thousands" of the jerseys each year, although it would be nice to know if it was 2,500 or 8,500. If it's the former and the NZRFU gets 50 dollars per shirt then they are making 125,000 dollars a year. Whoop dee doo. If it's the latter then it's 425,000 a year which they make (almost enough to pay half Jonah Lomu's wages for a while there).
It's not enough that they fleece people who could, and should (if not for the greed of Adidas and the NZRFU) be paying a lot less for the shirt though. They now want to take things further.
The Rugby Union announced this week that it was filing a trademark application for black rugby jerseys or even "black casual shirts" made in the style of a rugby jersey, with a white collar and a "fern device". All three elements were needed for a trademark infringement. The Rugby Union reckons it is missing out on merchandise royalties worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars", maybe even into the million-dollars-plus range, because of the fake jerseys on the market.
"The national game is now big business and big business is always going to protect its interests," Mr Russell said.
It was possible to buy "any number" of imitation rugby jerseys and the union was trying to collar the market for anything that looked like an All Black jersey.
This type of thing really bites my crack for two reasons. Firstly is it not possible that the reason that people are buying cheaper imitation jerseys, t-shirts or whatevers is that THEY CAN'T AFFORD THE REAL THING?!. Simply eliminating any cheaper alternatives means that people who obviously like the AB's now can't buy anything and probably get sodded off. If Adidas and the NZRFU want a piece of this market then start offering official alternatives.
The second reason is that New Zealands sporting colours are black and white. Each and every team or individual who is representing NZ wears these colours with verying designs. And the silver fern goes along with it. Would the rugby union like to strip all our olympians naked at the Athens Olympics later this year because they are 'wearing All Black jersey' imitations? Go fall down a hole.
I bought a black shirt a year or two ago because I wanted to wear a black shirt with a silver fern and New Zealand written onto it in my travels abroad (and cos I get sick of being called an American when I'm in Korea). But gee, if I want to wear black with a silver fern on it in the future I'll have to pay 190 bucks. Not freakin likely.
Also as Consumer Insitute's chief executive David Russell says...
Official All Blacks T-shirts, selling for up to $50 each, could be brought into New Zealand for just $3 to $5, Mr Russell said. T-shirts had "a buy-in value of $3 and $5 base price, delivered in New Zealand", he said. "You would get them into the shops for less than $10," he said, including printing. "People are paying far, far more for the image than the base product," Mr Russell said.
Check out those mark ups! As I said earlier, why don't they put these things on the market for cheap, affordable prices, like say 20-30 dollars. Surely they'd sell a fair chunk more, they'd have more people wearing them around thus getting the flow on marketing effect and they'd make more people happy. Oh that's right, I forgot they couldn't give a stuff about Joeline Public, they're in it for the mullah.
And the results of the poll by stuff.co.nz say it all really.
Eight hundred and fifty one say they wouldn't pay 190 dollars for the jersey and only 70 say they would. Roughly 7 percent. I wonder when those seven percent finished waxing their Jaguar in the driveway before coming in to play on the net?
We are talking about the internet community in NZ as well. Not exactly the most broke sector of society in most cases. I'd hazard a guess that roughly 2-3 percent of NZers consider that a fair price to pay and as suggested in the story, it's wealthy Asian tourists doing a fair amount of the purchasing. Aren't most other things in life considered a fair price? To get a rating of a few percent says a lot in my opinion.
I'd love to know how many NZers walk into a store when there are no test matches on (therefore no real hype around) and buy an All Black jersey. My guess is you could count the number sold on one hand in the entire country per day.
I'm glad I bought my Warriors shirt when it was only 120 dollars in their inaugural season though. Their shirt prices have been going the same way.
Give us sport lovers a break ya greedy &^%&$#'s.
Actually as an afterthought...any of you remember all the "Be the Reds" t-shirts that everybody was wearing in Korea during their World Cup campaign in 2002? I do cos I bought about ten of them for 50 dollars. No they didn't fall off the back of a lorry or get discounted. That's what they were. About 5 dollars each. And we're not talking about Bangladesh here. This is a country where the average wage is around 2,500 NZ a month.
Even the Korean national team shirt is only about 90 NZ dollars, and it's made of 'special' material as well. But then again, it is pink :(
