Why Don't Prices Ever Come Down In This Hobby?

[mcarroll]

Super Street
At NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series races and select NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series events, Super Street racers compete on a fixed 10.90-second index. All vehicles must be full-bodied cars and weigh no less than 2,800 pounds except for six-cylinder cars, which may have a minimum weight of 2,000 pounds, and four-cylinder- and rotary-powered cars (1,200 pounds). Engine and chassis modifications are virtually unlimited. Racers compete on a five-tenths Pro Tree.

Very cool! (I'm a pretty big fan of both hobbies....though I only drive aquariums. )















https://www.google.com/imgres?imgur...OjaAhXFtlMKHUePADUQMwhXKAYwBg&iact=mrc&uact=8
What do you drive??

NHRA's million classes of drag racing are fun to watch, but confusing to tell apart and keep the competition rules straight...tell me if I have this right at all...

For Super Street, both racers get handicaps (so they finish at the same time in spite of having wildly differing cars) and race against the 10.9 time vs racing against each other, right?

It seems like in those cars pictured a lot of work is from vendors (Ford, GM, MOPAR and all the vendors you named, etc) vs doing your own R&D.

That's how it is in aquariums too.

Some folks DIY their systems somewhat like in the old days...R&D and all....takes years to pull off, but results seem impressive. But most folks buy everything from vendors and just do the assembly and light integration. Some folks even buy pre-integrated systems! There's not a whole lot of R&D going on in any but the heavy-DIY systems....and even then it may be more fabrication work than R&D. Mostly, folks want to be there as an operator after all. R&D is hard, expensive and often fruitless.

If you look more closely you'll see R&D in our hobby You're just more familiar with racing gear right now so that seems more apparent.

(HINT: Look for it more in knowledge of the animals and their ecology than in the gear, but it's there on both fronts. You also have to be able look past sizzle to see whether there's really any steak sometimes.)

There's also the aspect of history, not to be too nerdy.

Most of the stuff needed for this hobby was built, invented or discovered as much as 160 years ago. It's an old hobby. (Cars didn't come along until thirty-some years later, around the same time as Edison's manufactured light bulb.)

By rights there SHOULDN'T be too much innovation left in such a mature "market" or something would be very wrong.

And to flip the script just for fun: From a fan's perspective, drag racing doesn't seem to change either.

 

[mcarroll]

 

[mcarroll]

now back to fish

 

[KJAG]

Consider a Nano if you can’t hang.

 

[RichReef]

What do you drive??

1973 Nova SS.
2950 lbs.
427 SBC. Dart block and Iron Eagle 230cc heads. Mechanical Crane cam. 3200-7300. 780 HP. Pump gas. All motor. No scab turbo or SC and no scab NOS. All motor.
Demon 830 CFM.
4L80 Trans with 3200 stall.
4.56 10 bolt diff. Mini tub with ladder bars. Full float.

9.82 @ 156 MPH, average. Street legal.

 

[Brew12]

Sorry I am late to the conversation but I find it interesting.

I wouldn't even call it niche. When there's millions of people around the world with marine pets, it's not so niche. Maybe owning an Apex is niche, but not the owning of marine animals. This also applies to freshwater, aquariums in general. And there are way more freshwater owners that would push it well out of the niche category.

I would be willing to agree that total aquarium ownership isn't a niche market, but I feel that salt water is. I would suspect there are under 200,000 salt water tanks set up each year. The market is also almost always being flooded with used equipment. I don't know how accurate it is, but I have heard that over 50% of people who start a SW tank get out of the hobby within 2 years.

So inflation is the reason that a 5 year old Reef Octopus skimmer, with all of the same parts, has remained at the same price over 5 consecutive years even though the skimmer has become cheaper to manufacture?

I can see why inflation would make prices rise on newer products, but why would it keep older products from devaluing? Everything devalues as newer items succeed it. But it doesn't happen here. It happens with other pet products, but I think this is something to take notice of.

I think the key here is that these items don't become cheaper to manufacture. Very few of these companies make any of their equipment themselves. They have to buy time on a manufacturers production line who they also have to pay retooling costs. The cost of this production time is very unlikely to be going down. In the case of skimmers, the raw material costs of acrylic also are going up and not down. When they do a production run, they try to project how long that inventory will last before needing the next run. This needs to be balanced with storage costs. They make a higher profit on a skimmer sold immediately after manufacture than they do on one sold 6 months later. They need to figure in these carrying costs as part of the sales price.
For the custom manufacturers in the US, their costs aren't going down, either. Just like our mortgages, taxes, food, and utility prices aren't dropping, theirs aren't either. The cost of them to have employees also goes up every year. They may gain some efficiencies as they improve processes and may get some breaks in raw material costs as they produce more, but it isn't going to have a substantial impact on their margins.