What makes some PCPs so expensive?

madeintheuk said:

You didn’t answer my question!
Do you think and avenger (which btw, had a metric ton of marketing just like the FX), is the same quality as an Impact??

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No is not .. does a well tuned gaunlet will do for a fraction of your money exactly the same as the impact at 100y or less.. that is what the average shooter has aviable ? Yes it will . Yes they have market their product really well.. but it would even compare by a small margin to the publicity stunt that the other do.. do you really think that 22cal 40g slugs are new I have shoot 40g from a condor 7 years ago when Nielsen first introduced up to 200y from a $400 used condor..pin point accurate from a good old LW ..17-7 twist.. when you have done that and then some YouTubers come telling you that if is not this special liner it can't be done..it really makes you uncomfortable the misinformation the are spreading..

R&D is also a huge, you can be sure these lesser players are preying off the design and hard work of the bigger guys.

I did some thinking on this before replying because how businesses run interests me.

You are combining three ways of looking at this and so the responses are all over the place from different perspectives. Some of my examples will be non-airgun related to avoid the passion people feel about what they own

The first is easy. The value of the brand. I start with this one only to get it out of the way. Name brand cereal at the store cost more than a stores inhouse brand. They may very well be made by the same manufacturer. You as the consumer pay for the brand

The other two are macro and micro economics. I will start with micro because it is again an easy one.

As an example is the crankshaft in a car cast, forged, or billet. Each of those is an engineering decision based on strength and an economic decision based on what is good enough for the application. Chrysler has moved toward powder forging to achieve both

My Hammerli trigger assembly is cast pot metal. Other triggers are CNC produced works of art

Those micro economic decisions are what others are referring to as fit and finish

Macro economics are based on what is the total cost of producing a product and what makes up that cost. From there you can know what the net profit (how much you actually put in your pocket) is after all expenditures. Breaking down those expenditures is where it gets interesting, and without intimate details we have to take a swage approach .

Cost of the building, machinery, and labor for inhouse production. Is it cheaper to do it yourself or contract it. Air Venturi with the Avenger pushes that cost to the foreign manufacturer. Others like FX, Daystate, BSA, Air Arms produce much inhouse which also includes material costs.

How much is sourced from other vendors because those vendors want their cut. Wood stocks from Italy, Daystate electronic triggers computers and chronographs, Lothar Walther barrels, etc .

Look at how some pickup trucks are made today. They cross between the US and Canada multiple times just to make the frame .

Is your business vertically or horizontally integrated.

Carnegie Steel reduced their overhead costs of producing steel by purchasing coal mines to run the furnaces and railroads to both transport the coal and their finished product .

Air Venturi appears to be very vertically oriented. I don't know the relationship of FX to FX-USA but if it is vertical then I can see huge cost savings.

With a horizontally oriented business every person who touches the product before it gets to you raises the price. Since the manufacturer can only sell at what the market can bear at the retail end that reduces their profit.

These small examples of these three components could go on and on, and I have barely skimmed the surface. That is what business degrees and real world experience are for.

I have an Avenger and a Prod and several P35s. I've had them all apart to varying degrees. The poorest made rifle is IMHO the Avenger. I don't like the fact that the back shroud support is plastic, for instance. I don't know if it is the rifle or the West Hunter scope it wears but the POI was wandering around on me trying to shoot a 30 yard challenge target yesterday. But when it decides to settle down it is nice and accurate. After work, the trigger is better than the P35s but not the Prod. The plastic stock on my Avenger is thin and not impressive and I really hate the fact it is in three pieces but it also keeps the weight of the rifle down. The Avenger has really nice features but they had to cost control it to bring it its price point. For the features it contains, I think the Avenger is amazingly inexpensive.

The Prod is a much simpler gun but I think it is U. S. made and still sells for under $400 last time I looked. Not nearly as powerful and shot count is much more limited but it is a bunch of fun. When I pulled it out of storage to shoot it yesterday it shot to exactly the same POI as when I put it away. I'm sure the tolerances are not as great in places as a $1500-3500 gun but it's unreasonable to think they would be. It doesn't use plastic where I think it should use metal and it works great. It's unregulated and stores only 66cc of air at no more than 3000 psi so both power and shot count are limited. But it's powerful enough for squirrels and a blast to shoot.

My favorite gun of the ones I own are the 3 P35s. I'm trying to compete in the 30 yard challenge with the 22 caliber, it is the most accurate. Most people have posted better targets than mine but there are a few much more expensive guns that haven't done as well yet. I like the P35 partially because it is a bullpup I can shoot. I shoot from my left shoulder and the Impact puts it's magazine right into my face. I also really appreciate the fact that the bare rifle weighs just over 5 lbs. Why carry around 2 more lbs? I can get as much velocity I want from pellets with these guns and still have air enough for over 50 shots from a fill. My 177 seems to be able to support 100 shots. My P35s have more metal parts and a much more effective shroud than either of my other guns. But they also have the worst trigger. After adjustment I can get the pull weight under 1 lb but I cannot get all the creep out without making the trigger unsafe in my opinion. So I put up with a tiny bit of creep. I only notice it target shooting. Hunting it feels fine. The P35 looks like the most expensive PCP I own at over $400 and getting it here adds to the price but all in it's under $500. The nice thing is you can make it 82-85db for about $1.50 in parts. Avenger needs much more work and at least a bit more expense to get there (I've settled on a in shroud moderator plus shroud vents).

I won't really know what $1500 or more will get me unless I decide to spend it. I will expect better machining in some areas and accuracy at least as good as my P35-22 and a better trigger. Is that worth another $1000 or more? It could give me more power but all I'm doing is pushing pellets 800-900 fps and I don't need more power for that. It seems that most things in life follow an exponential curve. For spending twice as much you don't get twice as much "value" you get a more modest increase. Doubling the cost again gives an even smaller increase. But if the more costly gun does something you really want to do that the less costly gun doesn't - then and only then I would spend the money. I haven't made up that justification yet so I don't yet have a Prophet (currently leading candidate).

Rob123 said:

Why are some PCPs much more expensive compared to others? What sets them apart and drives the price up? What I don't understand is how an FX Impact, which is close to top of the line, is close to $1500 less expensive than a Daystate Alpha Wolf, for example.

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O that's easy, the price

Have not considered buying one of the higher priced PCP’s. I have the tools, the skills, the ability to learn, which pretty much enables me or others to make or upgrade a suitable PCP.
I have a variety of Airguns, which are great for tinkering. Kind of running out of room. If I really need more power, then powder burner. Not really explained well, but I hope you get my drift.

What confuses me about all these responses is, the majority of you who are saying it’s just the price, own more than one expensive pcp. So if it was just price, why own one?

I don't have a high end PCP, yet. But I will drive my BMW convertible to church tomorrow. I ordered it from Germany in 2009 to get a manual. I could have gotten a less expensive car but I got what I wanted. I still enjoy it. I don't like the inaccurate speedometer, the lack of tire pressure display, and several other things. I think "high end" PCPs are kind of like my BMW. Their purchase may not be totally rational but sometimes we want what we want. If we get enjoyment from them then it at least kind of makes sense. You either spend it yourself or leave it to your kids.

It is probably a combination of allot of factors. If we look at labour cost alone, Chinese, Russian, and many east eruropean brands seems logical being cheapest to by in other parts of the world. But also how succesfull a brand is, allow them to choose the price. FX probably sell allot of guns all around the world, even Sweden labour is probably not cheap. China, and Russia probably is, but if they sell less guns, each gun will be be more expensive to make.
Also new inovations like daystate eletronic guns, probably, make development allot more expensive. Taipan, which basically make the same gun, over and over, year after year, for the most part can skip development and inovation, and focus on keeping quality up. FX which seems to make a new model, or upgraded version of a previous gun every year, has to spend allot in development.
And if a expensive gun suddenly became cheap, it actually may sell less, as often customers believe an expensive gun has better quality

I was shopping for a set of brake pads at the local Porsche dealer, and the price was outrageous. I vented a little to the parts guy, asked how could they charge that much. He said, "well, they figure Porsche owners will pay anything!"

Cheap/expensive scenarious seems to go to the extreeme in the home stereo buisness. Think there was several years ago a case where an amplifier manufacturer doubled the price of the same product, and then sold more, simply because customers believed higher price equals better quality.
If a known brand get a chineese company to make the product for them, they can price it double or more, as an uknown brand selling the same product.
And also if we want to, we can spend thousands of dollars on speaker cables, where blind listening tests, with a test panel, has not been able to tell the difference between much more cheaper cables

So if someone’s paying $20 an hour to run a machine only a hundred hours to justify costs,not to mention machine costs electricity ,taxes on machine,etc. that’s why it’s expensive in US and other first world countries

FX builds most of the parts in house with their own CNC machines, Daystate doesn't do that as far as I know. That will add to cost.

I'm sure the delta and alpha cost more to make.

elh0102 said:

I was shopping for a set of brake pads at the local Porsche dealer, and the price was outrageous. I vented a little to the parts guy, asked how could they charge that much. He said, "well, they figure Porsche owners will pay anything!"

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This is an inaccurate analysis, assuming "Porsche owners will pay anything" the "parts guy" says it costs. What percentages are these type consumers of high end anything driving the market? I say Zero. Quality and value are the drivers of the product, whether it be air guns or Porsches, and if this changes, so does the consumer.
This quality and value ideal is subjective on every level of purchasing power, not just "High End".

Patrick

Best Buy in the market derived from reliability, quality, accuracy, long lasting is less costly that FX Impact. That best buy is Aigun Technology.

Emu said:

Best Buy in the market derived from reliability, quality, accuracy, long lasting is less costly that FX Impact. That best buy is Aigun Technology.

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@Emu
Totally understand your point and agree. My premise is, at this level we are comparing , AT is one of the few high end manufactures that produce products that will appeal to those that can appreciate, as I stated before, quality and value in a product.
"The Best" is always subjective, but, I appreciate your keen sense.

Patrick

2L8 said:

This is an inaccurate analysis, assuming "Porsche owners will pay anything" the "parts guy" says it costs. What percentages are these type consumers of high end anything driving the market? I say Zero. Quality and value are the drivers of the product, whether it be air guns or Porsches, and if this changes, so does the consumer.
This quality and value ideal is subjective on every level of purchasing power, not just "High End".

Patrick

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Most people believe that new brake pads, regardless of Manufacture, will still be less expensive than using the guys brakes in front of them to stop. Insurance isn't cheap either.

Having owned a Porsche 3 different times in my life, the cost for some parts I felt was excessive, but if you need it to keep them running, oh well.

Smitty

2L8 said:

This is an inaccurate analysis, assuming "Porsche owners will pay anything" the "parts guy" says it costs. What percentages are these type consumers of high end anything driving the market? I say Zero. Quality and value are the drivers of the product, whether it be air guns or Porsches, and if this changes, so does the consumer.
This quality and value ideal is subjective on every level of purchasing power, not just "High End".

Patrick

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Not an analysis, just a true story. But the point was not lost on me. Prices are not necessarily supported by the seller's cost or a minimum return on equity.

I’m not touching this one. Although just before I read @smitty911’s post I’d thought a very similar thing about having run a business. I also thought about elements of @d3vnull’s economic overview. Aside from those I wondered, “how many respondents have machined or built a PCP airgun?” I haven’t and I don’t specialize in marketing, so I’m pretty ignorant here. There have been some interesting responses to the original question.

Good thread!

A few responses have touched on the R&D costs and its effect on final pricing, bu I think few people really grasp how muc effect it actually has.
If any of us knew the actual ammount spent from the first conceptual drawing to the first viable prototype, i think most would be shocked.
R&D costs can be huge, and airguns are sold in realtively small numbers. That cost has to be spread across thos hopefully acurate projected sales numbers.

Now compare that to the $400 China made guns. Many of these guns sold under different names share many components.
As for R&D costs, often that is just what it costs to copy what someone else labored to create.

I own 1 low end, 1 mid range, and 1 higher end PCP.
While the entry level gun did give me great value for the money, it can not even come close to the quality and consistant accuracy of the other two more expensive guns.

The difference between the other two is not as extreme, but they are two totally different guns with different purposes and both well worth the high prices that I paid for them.