UKH

My Wife has just bought 8 Tubular Stretch neck wear things of the internet for £8, delivered, and they are okay, not premium but OK, and is suspect they may improve with use.
I bought one in Kathmandu, for 60p, which is spot on, obviously getting there cost a bob or two.
I said to my Wife, crikey £1 each delivered, makes the premium brand at £10 each seem a bit pricey.
My Wife gently sat me down, and informed that the premium brand, cost about £20.
HOW MUCH I SQUAWKED.

On a serious note, this must be a contender for the most profitable item of outdoor gear. They can only cost pennies to make in Vietnam or wherever.

Is there anything else that compares?

The Ben Nevis North Face car park

As soon as you factor in a respectable wage (wherever they are located) for the numerous skilled people required to operate a business at any scale, the margins shrink quite rapidly. 

Sure someone can operate a loom and knock out a scarf and sell it on a stall for a quid a make a living in some places.

The thing that stands out here is that anything like that can be made for 60p and still be viable. The clothing industry is responsible for some horrendous exploitation all the way from crop to shop.

All true. 

However, I would not be at all surprised, if the card insert on the premium brand cost as much to produce, as the neck thing itself.

Black Diamond pure gold chalk. 5g for £4.38

https://bananafingers.co.uk/black-diamond-pure-gold-upsalite-chalk

I suspect trail shoes make good money. They cost lots to buy, last 500 miles and fall apart, but I suspect don't cost so much to make. That's at least a couple of pairs a year for many runners.  Other things just don't have that temporary nature and so might have a larger initial profit, but last years. 

I was about to mention chalk.

100kg of light magnesium carbonate is £8.45/kg

https://www.inoxia.co.uk/products/chemicals/inorganic-compounds/magnesium-c...

Have wondered about making my own, as probably the one thing appropriate for my rudimentary sewing skills, but figured that buying the stretchy fabric would probably be more faff than just buying a new buff.

(Any beta on this welcome - I'm stuck indoors with concussion and not able to do much else but sew)

hydration products?

Protein? much the same solution to waste whey from the yoghurt industry as whiskers and chum are to the surplus cow anus industry...

Oh no - what did you do?  Nowt too serious I hope.  Are you expecting to be laid up for long?

I think the thing about a Buff (or a much cheaper generic neck-tube thingy) is that there's no seam - the material is knitted into a tube in the first place.  Presumably a really really long tube that then just gets chopped up into Buff-sized pieces. 

I think having a seam in a normal one would be quite annoying, though you could make a warm fleecy one maybe?

It's interesting how the profit margin varies between different products.

Leather boots, for example, have a tiny margin, as otherwise no-one would buy them.

Thermal liner gloves, on the other hand, cost pennies to make and have a huge margin on them.

You'd hope that a premium brand would be reinvesting a wedge of that profit into R&D and infrastructure. 

Ha ha we were looking and laughing at these in Ekosport in Avignon the other day. I think there were some Buff ones and Solomon ones for well over 25€.

Oh and the Black Diamond Trekking batons which are 189€ for a single one, not even a pair.

E

You've been away from Blackburn too long if you even use batons in English!

You beat me to it, clearly you can take the lad out of lancashire, and the lancashire out of the lad.

Yeah yeah I know, they'll always be sticks to me really.

E

A lot of synthetic base layers must be very cheap to make, yet stick a brand name on and they cost £10s.

Having said that I have 4 Helly Hansen long sleeved tops which I wear all the time. The oldest of which is at least 15 years old so cost to me per use is very small, which is how I tend to value my outdoor gear (in monetary terms at least).

Thanks. Don't recommend letting a car door close on your eye. 

Mine (not actually Buff brand itself - Bula, think actually a kid's one) has a seam and I've never noticed it as an issue but it is also double thickness whereas a lot of others don't seem to be. Quite possible it is beyond my seamstressing mind.

(In case anyone else is interested - https://lotsafreshair.com/howto-make-a-buff/)

If you consider a crag snack as outdoor gear...

From the recent House of Lords report

apple growers receive approximately 3 pence from a bag of six apples sold for £2.20

My Mother lost an eye due to a detached Retina when thos happened to her. Any odd things with your vision, A and E, and if within 30 miles, Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. 

Take care 

Looked into this & Buff are made in Spain where they originated- so proper wages conditions sustainability etc..

https://gearjunkie.com/apparel/your-buff-came-from-a-village

Thanks. Been to A&E a week ago and they just said concussion but not worth scanning. Just seems to be a longer recovery than I expected - just over one week in, apparently could be another week. Impractical time to be semi house bound but sounds like it could be worse.

Sporks? Injection moulded plastic selling for £2.50.

That may be the most expensive, but is it most profitable?

Good shout, someone is having a good do there.

… breaks easily and are thus replaced for another £2.50…

Not particularly profitable, because it only sells in tiny quantities - but here's an example of a very healthy mark-up from a kayak manufacturer..

A spare wire for your skeg - £18.18 for 2.5m here: https://shop.seakayakinguk.co.uk/collections/skeg-parts/products/spare-skeg...

Alternatively you could buy 3m of it for £2.19 here: https://www.gsproducts.co.uk/3mm-7x19-stainless-steel-wire-rope-cable/

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/_louis-vuitton-Limited-Edition-Monogram-Nan...

I believe the RRP was around $1600... (I know, it doesn't really count)

Right, but if you thought to yourself 'I want some of that tubular fabric action', how much would it cost to buy what is presumably, as mentioned earlier, some sort of hose loom, plus research and buy appropriately stretchy yet thin material? 

And, since it's hard to think how you'd make your version sufficiently better than what Buff do already, think how hard it'll be to carve a big enough share of the market to earn you back what you just shelled out

Avoid red sporks, for some reason these seem much more breakable whereas the orange ones are bomber

I think, you have totally ignored the question in the OP, but thank you for explaining to me how branding and markets work, but I do already know.

Ha, yes, sorry, it was a bit of a tangential response; I was just thinking Buffs etc aren't necessarily as profitable as they might appear 

I do remember years ago, videos playing in outdoor shops, explaining multiple ways to wear a buff.

I assume the person behind it had a very clear vision of how they wished the brand to develop. Very clever really, to take a piece of cloth and create an international brand.

I do have the branded ones, I find them in car parks trodden into the mud, they look like disposed snot rags, chuck em into the washing machine, good as new. 

An advert for this company keeps popping up in my Facebook feed - https://www.balenciaga.com/en-fr/discover/new-arrivals_skiwearcollection?fb...

Just seen they do a fleece buff for £350.  WTAF

I had never heard of them, but I think they must have the record for mark up. I am genuinely interested if they ever make one sale.

I wonder how big the hands were that got paid the pennies

Without wishing to seem to get political, there seems something obscene about that, have you seen the beanie for similar money 💰 

In fairness (and I am loath to defend such high prices) but both the hat and neck buff are 100% polyester

/sarc off

(Polyester is one of the cheapest fabrics which dominates fast fashion so wtf these clowns think they are charging is beyond me)

"I am genuinely interested if they ever make one sale."

I suspect they do. Even in the outdoor industry we have seen escalating prices on decent waterproof clothing etc. I reckon it's a result of people becoming more comfortable borrowing / buying on credit and the clothing brands edging their pricing up because they can. Klarna/paypal pay in three etc...all making it much easier to hit the purchase button and worry about it later.

Big mark ups for me? I'm always amazed at how expensive some cycling apparel is , I would also include wardrobes. £1k for some cheap mdf cobbled together? Then Perfume....98% water? 

That's how I get hats. Just lying around on the hills or in car parks. Found one just yesterday in a car park in Perth. I have about five beanies, but never wear them. Pity I hate hats really.

Why are they wearing their over priced ski wear on the beach?

I’m sure it’s been said, but it has to be anti-Covid masks. £220 million buys you, er, more or less nothing usable, as far as I can tell.

jcm

Coleman fuel anyone?

I have no idea, 

Very obscene 

Balenciaga is a "luxury" fashion brand like Dolce & Gabana, known for brash and loud styling.  The whole point of them is people know you have spent loads of money of stuff you didn't have to spend loads of money on.  The conclusion is that people are freakin weird.

Perhaps only tangibly outdoor gear but this must come close:

https://www.schoffelcountry.com/oakham-fleece-gilet-22358#selection.color=9...
 

Was in one of those awful ‘Country Clothing’ shops in Bakewell as the eldest had requested one of these. Imagine the cheapest, nastiest fleece you used to find for a fiver in supermarkets edged with very fake leather. £160! 

Was having a think about this, then it occurred to me there must be some kind of unsung hero that we can all agree on…

Then I realised there’s one bit of kit that we undoubtedly own, many times over, interact with every day, is hugely reliable and would render much of our kit useless if we didn’t have it.

Yet none of us think about its cost, ever shop around for alternatives or perhaps even know we pay for it, albeit indirectly.

The YKK zip. The world leader, cheap to buy, reliable and graces all sorts of garments from the most budget to the highest spec. Trusted by millions and hailed by few.

Low cost, high reliability. Imagine where we would be without such a good manufacturer?

Camping Gaz in the blue campervan size bottles.

£55 to re-fill a bottle you already own, rather than a new purchase.

Only profitable if anybody daft enough to buy.

More a rip off imho. Only plus point is european wide availability. 

£55 for 2.6kg butane.

Flo gas Propane cost me £34 for 6kg recently.

6kg of autogas propane (12litres) is about £11.

€33.80 here in Europe.

The national distributor must consider their German punter to be less gullible than the UK one , then.

Standard business protocol is to charge what the customer will pay rather than what it costs to produce plus a margin.

Yes, some people traditionally were users of the blue camping gas bottles because they were universal throughout Europe. But now Coleman owns Camping Gas they have taken the local market pricing strategy to new levels - 14€ in Portugal, £55 in the UK for the same size bottle.

I think Coleman also owns Calor Gas and their small butane and propane cylinders were always much better value in the UK. So they recently announced they’re discontinuing them both as they’re ‘unprofitable’. (After much protest they claim to have rescinded that, but the reality is they’re unobtainable in most places). If you have a dedicated gas locker (such as on boats and some motorhomes) designed for those sizes, none of the other manufacturer’s bottles will fit. So you’re left with the overpriced blue camping gas as your only option. Or refill your own. 

Calor is owned by SHV Holdings (a Dutch group), CampingGaz is owned by Newell Brands (as part of the Coleman division).