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Buy and Sell Used Climbing Gear Please do not post retail SPAM.

Topic Date User

insane gear prices! 14-May-2010 At 8:48:42 PM hargs

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There's something very wrong here, but the problem isn't just with retailers. Freight, duties, taxes, middlemen, vendor's regional pricing policies; all these things contribute to our situation. As buggered as it is, the system's busted arse lumbers on because enough of us keep buying stuff at ridiculous prices.

Capitalism is basically arbitrage: you get your hands on something in one place at one price and you offload in another place at a higher price. Why wouldn't you keep doing that for as long as you could? It stops only when you can no longer unload your stuff at high enough prices. That situation will never change because it's good to buy locally, or because it's nice to visit a shop where you can pick stuff up and try it on.

Pointing at local retailers and complaining about their prices is easy because they're the only part of the supply chain most of us recognise, the only part we ever meet face to face. But retailers aren't really the last link in the supply chain; we are. Until we buyers change our habits, there's no pressure on the rest of them to change theirs.

The obvious answer, at least for those of us pouring our lives down the intertubes, is direct distribution. Everyone buys direct from the vendor at a price they set to meet their corporate objectives, competition, and the market. Distribution sorts itself out. The price consumers pay varies according to the actual cost of freight which, as numerous posters have pointed out, isn't as much as you might think. That's the simplest, coldest, and most economic answer. And while it puts the clothes back on the emperor, it probably means there won't be many places left where I can try on a jacket.