El Sueno De La Razon Produce Monstrous

hoorray · Nov 17, 2004

Date: 11/17/2004 10

8:50 AM
Author: Paul-Antwerp
As much as I may agree that Leonid is really taking care to arrange things in the best way possible for everyone, without wanting to hurt anyone''s business,

and as much as I agree that Brad is foolishly mislead by his own perceptions and carried away by them up to the extent that it becomes dangerous,

I do have to agree with one point of Brad in this particular regard.

For me, there is no logical way to defend putting a price (even an indicative price, with all clarifiying clauses added) on a stone, which might be available to call in somewhere, implying that this is a B&M-price, close to a B&M-price or any other description that contains the letters B&M. However laudable the goal of the whole concept is, by doing that, I think that one is crossing the line of acceptability.

In the end, this might reflect badly upon the rest of Pricescope, the forum, its contributors and the sound advice given to all asking and lurking.

Personally, I would prefer the Pricescope without this ''B&M-vendor-option''. One is either a vendor, who wants to be listed here, or one is not, and the distinction between ''e-vendor'' and ''B&M'' looks immaterial to me, and the pricing-distinction (even indicative) offers unclear and confusing information.

Just my 2 cents,

I see everyone''s point on the pricing, and in general agree that PS shouldn''t list prices that the vendor has never heard of or agreed to. I think this is the tough part of this whole stone/vendor matching concept. As a consumer, if I did this search, it would be too much leg work to find a list of stones with no pricing info and then try to obtain prices from different vendors. Price is a a critical part of the selection criteria for most people and comes to play early in the process as people sort out what they can afford.

I also think the list should be an opt-in list, if for no other reason to make it a more meaningful list. As it was, the list had everyone from Zales to the mall stores to the high end independents, so was too mixed of a group to be realistic that this would work.

I still like the concept, and I think there is a way to make it work, but it may take some fairly extensive marketing to the vendors first to build a good list before it is useful.

pricescope · Nov 17, 2004

Paul, suggested retail price is common practice in the US and Canada. Usually it is higher or equal to what you can find in retail stores.

The Pricescope.net system enables each wholesaler to specify his own suggested retail prices.

I believe that it is in consumers' interest to have as much information as possible about diamonds available on the market. It is not a secret that prices and margins in the web are lower than in B&M stores. Even appraisers use different pricing based on which market the diamond was bought.

The point is that majority of consumers still prefer buying from B&M stores despite of the higher price tag. For most of the consumers buying diamonds in the web is still something out of the question.

Nonetheless, 70% of consumers using the internet for their research of diamonds and engagement rings. They know about Blue Nile, Pricescope and other places; they know internet diamond prices. Yet 95% go and buy from their local jeweler. So the idea was to let shoppers know that they can get these stones from B&M jewelers of their choice. Price shown is just a ball park based on public data and passed through wholesalers – who are the current owners of these diamonds.

As we've seen here https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/jeweler-of-choice-a-new-project-beta.19843/page-2, retail gross margins vary from 22% and up. These are public data. According to Garry, retail store cannot survive for less than 25%. Why you guys in the trade make such a big deal out of it? When I buy a car I know precisely how much money dealership makes on it. So what?

Consumers might also be interested to know that these prices reflect “memo” price and if a jeweler would to buy it for cash it can be cheaper. Therefore, jewelers should only benefit because they do not invest anything and are getting a client who’s already made the homework and know what diamond they want.

Hest88 · Nov 17, 2004

Suggested retail price is common with other products but it is not common with diamonds---unless you want to talk about jewelers who pull out the Rap sheet and negotiate from there. When I see "suggested retail price" on a camera, Circuit City or Ritz Camera knows what that retail price is. When a B&M jeweler who has not opted to be listed gets a customer asking for a stone at our suggested retail price they probably had no clue there was that expectation in the first place.

valeria101 · Nov 17, 2004

Date: 11/17/2004 108:50 AM
Author: Paul-Antwerp

For me, there is no logical way to defend putting a price (even an indicative price, with all clarifiying clauses added) on a stone, which might be available to call in.[...] Personally, I would prefer the Pricescope without this 'B&M-vendor-option'. [...] the distinction between 'e-vendor' and 'B&M' looks immaterial to me...

There is always a "call in" moment - it needs to be. Hence a material difference between Etailer and B&M - these guys seem to need each other, seen from a (huge, theoretical) distance.
It seems that if an acceptable number can be quoted there, this would represent a serious step forth. Perhaps decisive.
Am I very wrong to saying this ?
Retail price is made up of some wholesaler quote plus X. Regardless of how this number related to neighboring E-Tailer quotes, it sounds bad. And it is darn hard to make up meaningless numbers with a acceptable explanation attached.
From such a base, it is quite easy for anyone down the communication chain to argue „well, this is just average, but in THIS case... it works only this good”. How on earth could EVERY item on a list be BELOW average ?

(I might have some idea though...) Not that anyone interested in just ONE transaction should ever care for the above logic.