Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post - NEW Estes Pro Series 2 kits !!!!

Having spent a considerable length of time in product distribution I have to say your blanket characterization of "middle men" is completely bogus. It is fairly common practice within certain high volume, low margin consumer products industries for your bogeyman in the middle to operate at little or no mark up, negotiating volume discounts for unaffiliated retail outlets and living on the short term investment generated by the time difference between payment from the retailer and remittance to the manufacturer. There are cost efficiencies that can only be achieved by independent distributors, especially when they handle multiple product lines from multiple manufacturers. Neither the individual manufacturer they buy from nor the retailer they sell to can achieve that efficiency without them. The alternative to the middleman distributor is Walmart. Is that your ideal?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghrocketman

A LOT of the reason why Enerjet died was due to the fact that they had astronomically stupid prices on their engines.
NOBODY nowadays would pay $41 for a 80 n-sec engine now, and that explains why few would pay $8 for same back then. Not a good value for the $.

As far as I'm concerned, the motors should cost even LESS than the prices on the Valuerockets website.
At least going through them one is not paying some ZERO-value-add middleman wholesaler for doing virtually nothing.
The fewer the steps in the distribution chain, the more the customer benefits.
One HUGE reason why I order direct from manufacturers whenever possible. I would probably buy more at hobby shops if most were reasonably priced at about 10-15% above websites, but noooooo, they know better.

Those that pay full-retail, frankly, are LAZY MORONS that should do a little freakin' research and save a whole ton of money.

Seeing as Fred always sees fit to mamby-pamby nit-pick everyone else at every possible opportunity, WTF is a "comapnies " ?