Fuji Acros Quickload Bulk Order

[Harley Goldman]

I am interested in getting some Acros QLs, but that price is a bit steep for me. Should the exchange rate turn and it come down significantly, I would be very interested.

[Songyun]

Does Fuji deliberately sell their film cheaper in U.S. market than in Japan market? I mean when Fuji usa carried acros QL it was $55 a box, I dont think the exchange rate was 1:200 then.

[Robert Hughes]

Back in the day, Fuji and every other Japanese company was selling everything below cost in order to gain market share in the USA. Walter Mondale was Ambassador to Japan, and fought with them for years to stop their below-market export pricing schemes, to no avail. I remember being in Japan in the 80's, seeing electronics for sale at fully twice the retail price there as here. But now that China has replaced Japan as the low-cost source of cheap plastic, Fuji has to make money with its US sales.

[Songyun]

Let's see if acros non QL is $1.7 per sheet, both tmax and delta is $1.1 per sheet, why is it so expensive to manufacture in Japan?

[Drew Wiley]

There is a difference between price dumping, which is generally illegal, and a differential market. It is fairly common for identical things to be more expensive in the
Japanese or German market where they were actually made than in the US simply because the home market is accustomed to paying a premium. This is something killing Sinar at the moment, because they have been far too slow to respond to what
Americans perceive as sticker shock. When they were the only game in town they got
away with it, but no longer. Consumer electronics are a more volatile and complicated market, including digital cameras. There are also issues of economies of scale, and of
protecting the marketing rights of official distributors. Unfortunately, there are also a
lot of just plain jerks and idiots in the marketing pipeline, who just want their bonus
(or at the moment, just to keep their job), who couldn't care less about the long-term
reputation of the corporation. I a professional buyer and go through this stuff on a
daily basis. In many cases it's usesless to second-guess the logic of a corporate
decision, simply because it wasn't logical in the first place. One reason so many manufacturers are failing right now is because they have been making really dumb decisions all along.

[Robert Hughes]

One reason so many manufacturers are failing right now is because they have been making really dumb decisions all along.

It's just that, earlier on, there was enough money floating around to cover their ineptitude. Now, people are being much more careful, and bad decision making is no longer profitable (unless you're on Wall Street).

[John T]

Fuji and every other Japanese company was selling everything below cost in order to gain market share in the USA

This was a situation that wasn't quite correct. Fuji Crystal Archive paper was much cheaper than the corresponding Kodak paper for another obvious marketing reason. Fuji was only available in one quantity per size 8x10 was only sold in 100 sheets boxes, 11 x 14 was only available in 50 sheets boxes, etc. Kodak offered 8x10 in 10 sheets, 25 sheets, and 100 sheets boxes. This allowed Fuji to deal with only 1 set of packaging and it allowed dealers to not have to stock more packages that wouldn't always sell.

[Dirk Rösler]

Let's see if acros non QL is $1.7 per sheet, both tmax and delta is $1.1 per sheet, why is it so expensive to manufacture in Japan?

The mistake is to take a fact (product price) and try to deduce other facts ("manufacturing is expensive in Japan/Germany/etc."). As Drew has indicated, there are a variety of factors in deciding a market price, and not all of it is rational or scientific. In the old days you would have never seen or cared how much a product cost elsewhere, now with the web it is much different.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

No wonder Grafmatic prices have recently gone sky-high.