New WM-DD center gear prototype is here (EDIT - final version is here)

Silverera,
All the latest posts from Marian are updates on this, including the one of last Sunday!

 

Now I can see them. This is what happens when you follow a link in Google. For some reason the other tabs with later posts were not visible. I'm on the same page now. Feel like a total newbie and I started back in 1975 in IT!!!!

 

Brilliant work Marian. You're going to be very popular.

 

Same here Marian. Would be happy to donate to offset development costs.

 

I would also be happy to collaborate. Let me know in what way. Congratulations.

 

Thank to you, all. Gears will be ready when I'm back from holiday (mid of August). I asked producer to postpone delivery.
If I need some more financial support, I will let you know. Thank you very much for kind offers.

Now I need to calculate final price. It is not easy because there are many factors that influence it.
Here, in Slovakia, and probably in whole EU, it is not easy to make such business. Well, I do not think it is business but law says "each repeated sale activity is business".

It means that I have to pay:
23% tax
14% health insurance
33% social insurance

plus I have to pay 10% ebay fees, about 5% PayPal fees...

At the end, I get almost nothing

OK, but the most important question is: how many pieces I will be able to sell per year. It goes hand in hand with price. If I set price too high, I sell less. When I set it too low, I will sell more with minimum profit.

What is your idea? How much would you be willing to pay for it? Which cost is still acceptable? Can you help?

Marian

 

Hi Marian,

I'm leaving on vacation as well, so no rush from my end.

With regard to pricing, I actually don't have a clue about manufacturing cost. And what would consequentially be a reasonable price.
I could share my personal 'price elasticity curve' which might give you an indication:

1. at a price of €10 I would buy one for all 4 of my DD Walkman and probably 6 extra just to be able repair some more in the future
2. at a price of €17,50 I would buy only for my 4 DD walkman
3. at a price of €35 I would probably buy 2
4. at a price of €50 I would only buy one to repair my WM DC2 and be very said that I would not be repairing my other DD....
5. at a price of €100 I would probably decide to give it another try to repair the gear, maybe I would still donate you €25 because I think you have done an amazing job

I hope this helps

 

I think Middachten explained it very well.
Also In my opinion for members you don't have to go through eBay and PayPal, It can be done through direct transaction. This way you can minimize the extra charges.

For myself, regardless of what expenses are I will be sending them to you to fix them.

 

I totally agree with this. I would be perfectly fine to pay this directly, no need to do via Ebay.

 

Only Marian knows the manufacturing costs and the initial investment made in "research and development". Unaware of this information, I share in a statement by Middachten as well as what Boodokhan said.
I also think it would be important to make a projection of possible demand. Seeing the incessant and important number of transactions of Sony DD that are observed day by day in Ebay, I believe that the demand should be interesting and mainly sustained in the time.
In addition, the existence of a reliable and economical solution is likely to further encourage Walkman transactions as well as an interest in fixing the existing ones.
If I were Marian, I would bet more to sell a lot at a reasonable price, but how much is reasonable in terms of manufacturing costs, only Marian knows.
Greetings.

 

My 5cents, from someone who does Not collect Walkmans... Not yet...
Paying a few humdred for a mint DD I would go for a new gear and new belts to make the initial "investment" worthwhile. So. $100+ or even $200-300 won't feel unreasonable to me. Given an option of "3 for the price of 2" I would start thinking about collecting

 

Thank you very much for precious information. Now I have much better idea what cost should be.
It is very good idea to make deals like "3 for price of 2". If I could, I would avoid eBay and PayPal but I'm afraid I would loose majority of customers. I'm also planning to start my own eShop. Just I need time, time, time... Of course, buyers can always benefit from lower price when they pay directly.

I have to disagree little with you in one thing. Initial cost will have only little influence on the gear repair kit price.
Once mold and other tooling cost fees are paid, the production cost per one piece is very low. MOQ is usually 1000pcs. In case of special screws it was 60 000. I do not expect that I will be able to sell the whole amount.

The goal is to find the best balance between price and number of pieces that I'm able to sell per time unit. To find the most effective price, so that the investment is returned as quick as possible. Thanks to your support, it is real that it will be returned.
Problem is the fees that I have to pay here in Slovakia. More than 70% goes to state. It is better when I invest these finances to development of other spare parts for cassette players. This is what I want to do.

It is very hard to estimate how many pieces I will be able to sell. For example, I started to sell speed calibration tapes about two years ago. I expected to sell only few pieces per year. Up to today, I sold more than 800! On the other hand, I expected to sell many rubber capstan rings for DD models and D6C. These are critical for sound quality and it is really MUST to replace them. Otherwise wow/flutter will be too much out of specs. Unfortunately, I'm able to sell only few pieces per month and my investment return is questionable.

But back to gears:
My idea is to start somewhere around EUR 30 ( 29.90 better and I will see in few months if it is efficient price or not. What do you think?

marian

 

[off topic]
I'm surprised you sold so many speed test tapes... they are pretty easy to home made and also absolute speed is not that important on a play only device (unless you are learning violin listening to cassettes). I tried adjusting a couple of players by hear with pre-recorded tapes and I got it right with a 5% error
I'm surprised too you sold so little DD rubber rings; cheap, easy to replace ...
[end of off-topic].

30 EUR is a reasonable price even though repairing the gear is not something I feel very comfortable doing my self. Maybe with a detailed step-by-step guide I might try to experiment. The difficult part for me is removing the gear itself, but maybe I'm easily scared off by C-Clips or a couple of wires to de-solder.

 

Hi Marian,

At 29.90 you are approaching my resistance levels in volume buying

But I will certainly buy some at that price!

And while I'm working on the machines, I will definitely replace the DD rings as well, so you will sell some of them as well.

Have a great holiday and we'll be in touch later in August!

 

For the amount of time and effort you have put into getting the gears made, I think your price of €29.90 is low. I have paid more to have my broken ones fixed.

A lot of people always say they will by one if it was available, but when it comes to the crunch they don’t part with their money as they want everything for next to nothing. I think £40 - £50 is a good starting point, then if you start to get the volume you can then start to lower your price if you like.

There are so many DD’s with need of a new gear, the serious people will pay for it and the rest of the people can stick to their clicking gears.

 

@TooCooL4 +1! With a low price @mihokm will jack the price for used DDs, no benefits for guys like me and no incentive for your next "undoable" project. Collectors win though...

 

On the other hand if the price is too high, current situation will not change much and on top of a DD walkman price you also have the cost of fixing the gear; those who now sell repaired DD will keep using their method if the replacement gear is too expensive and that will result in poor sale for Marian. The fact that he sold very few rubber ring is an indication that people is either not very comfortable fixing walkman's on their own or they are not willing to part with the 10 EUR it costs.
Setting a reasonable price for the gear will make many broken DD easier to repair and while the cost of a broken DD will probably increase, the average price of DD's will generally decline as there will be more working DD's on the market.

 

Collectors don't care, they are only buying it to look at. It only has to look pretty for them, i buy to use.

It only makes sense for a low price if he can get people to commit and put money out upfront, let's say a thousand people said yes and gives him the money upfront that way he knows he will make his money back and some profit.
When you can get know ones as spares they cost £20 and that's from Sony which had all the tooling and money to do the production run. Marian has had to do it all again from scratch and if people are only willing to pay €10ish he would have to sell tons of it to make anything back. If he is doing it for labour of love then that is different, which i suspect that is partly what he is doing but it would be good to get paid too.

 

$100 for the first one, $30 each one thereafter?...

 

In my case, for 30 euros I will buy at least one. I think it is a reasonable price that should compensate for the time spent and the initial investment, and all the good energy put into this project. I have a WM-d3 I want to recover, and a WM-DD2, but this has damaged some tapes, I do not know if it will be because of the central gear problem itself. I am not a collector, the ones I have I use with passion. Greetings and a good holiday.