Dis-Obedient Die Crap, Part III

I promised a final update to the Viking Magic posts (you can check out Part 1 and Part II) I've been making. I learned a lot from the exchange of e-mails and comments and I hope you, my readers, have to. The most important lesson, of course, is that we must support magic owners and dealers who are honest and sincere and who deal with customers in a fair fashion. Magic Makers and Penguin Magic do not belong in that topic and I personally believe you should avoid doing business with them. Viking Magic, on the other hand, should be supported and frequented.

To end this post, I'd like to publish George Robinson's e-mail to me, in response to the last post I made:

Hello Pagliacci; thank you for your recent note and comments on Badland's etc. As for the dealer mark-up it is actually 50% mark-up on cost, not 200% One could look at it as 100% mark-up as well but this is an accounting term that is confusing at best. You see, the price is reduced by 50% to the dealer. Most dealers can no longer support their business on a straight 40% mark-up. The cost of doing business is just too great. With the added costs in fuel which have raised the cost of shipping dramatically, making less than 50% mark-up is causing a lot of companies to close.

One of the problems inn making items that have a dealer distribution cost built in is that it does cause the item to become more expensive. Now imagine selling to jobbers which are the distributors. You have to give them a 60% discount which in the case of Badland's would bring that cost to $18.00; now you can see that there is no profit in that item for the manufacturer if I were to job it out.

Another thing you must consider is that everything on the market place has a level. Not everyone can afford a Lamborghini and since that is the case, why should the manufacturer offer his product at a discount? Just so the masses can afford it? No, they have to settle for a Ford Mustang or what ever. Our place in the market place is to provide the best quality apparatus we can at a reasonable price. Reasonable to whom is another story, but given the fact that we give guarantees, top quality workmanship, original products, we feel we are justified in our pricing. Anyone can cheapen a product as you have pointed out, but it will generally not give the service the more quality oriented product would give. Another case in point. If you go to a Dollar Store, you will find items there that seem impossible to make for a $1.00, yet there they are. BUT, how long will they last? I have purchased locks at these stores for a $1.00 and they have lasted a few dozen openings, rusted in the rain, etc. In the long run, I spent more trying to save a few dollars.

The Magic business today is very difficult because of the theft of original ideas plus the discounting going on on the Internet. Then you have the flood of inexpensive items coming in from India, China, Indonesia, etc. which essentially are copies of standard and/or exclusive items. The flood has made Magic relatively mundane and available to the masses which in turn have taken the mystique away from our Art. Don't get me started....

As far as controlling rip-offs, the best we can ask for is for the buying public, the magician's to insist on buying original products produced by those that own the rights, etc. They should demand that their dealer supply them with original Magic and if that dealer continues to sell copies, buy from someone else. It isn't like there aren't enough dealers out there that are honest, there are a few. Find them. Cost can not be a factor in this as we are loosing many creative people due to this theft of ideas. Steve Dusheck, John Cornelius and other have gone underground or quit all together and the Magic fraternity is the looser in this. What miracles could these people have come up with if we would only have supported them. The thieves can NOT create. It is not in their ability and that is why they copy. They offer nothing to support our Art and further nothing except to make money for themselves off the backs of others.

Again, thank you for being an upstanding guy and answering my note and printing it, etc.

Sincerely,
George R.

I bolded the last part of George's e-mail (he hadn't sent it to me that way) because I believe that there's a lot of truth in whta he wrote there. It's advice for us all to follow.