Re: Why are elliptical trainers so expensive?

The club machines are extremely expensive. I think part of that is that
charge what the market will bear. You are not the market. The health clubs
are. They are also built to take much more use than a home machine would
ever get, and that does add to the cost, but not enough, in my opinion, to
justify the 8-10X difference vs. the average cost of a home machine, about
$500. The sweet spot for home users that want something that will last is in
the $800 to $1600 range. There are lots of nice, durable machines in that
range. You just have to look. These could also sell for less if more people
bought them, but I think most home users will not pay over $500; getting the
mid-price stuff into that final price range is not going to be easy, even
with Chinese manufacture. So we have a three level market: mass home market,
serious home market, and the clubs/rich home users.

Remember the Nordic Track ski machines? The standard Pro model was $600 and
massively over-priced at that figure. The fad was strong, though, and so
they sold for that...and more. The fad ended and Pro models sell in perfect
shape on eBay for under $100. Nordic Track nearly went belly up when the fad
died. (I think the parent company, CML, did.) Same will happen with
ellipticals.

As for the cost of drugs in the U.S., developing drugs is EXTREMELY
expensive and risky. (I work for a company that does contract pharma.
manufacturing and I see this every day and that's just the manufacturing
part.) We are in the sad situation, in the U.S. that we pay for the R&D on
new drugs for the world here because the other countries simply will not
pay. They require lower prices and can get them because we pay for the R&D
and the pharmaceutical companies make just manufacturing based (largely)
profits from everybody else. Those are smaller, but not to be ignored. If it
ever came to the point that in the U.S. paid what the rest of the world
pays, drug development for anything other than near-sure-thing candidates
for large markets would grind to a halt. If you think that current drug
therapies are adequate and see no need for much new drug development, that
would be OK.

I hate paying for expensive drugs myself, but the reality is that drug
development is very expensive and someone has to pay for it or there will be
none. Today, that someone is us. Reality really sucks sometimes.

-- 

- GRL

"It's good to want things."

                      Steve Barr (philosopher, poet, humorist, chemist,
Visual Basic programmer)
"Never_give_up" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I went by my local fitness dealer and was looking over Precore
> machines. I noticed they range from the cheapest $2400 to the most
> expensive $6000. I use a Precor at my gym and would like one for my
> home so I wouldn't have to travel the 25 mile trip back and forth
> everyday to go to my nearest local gym. I'm really considering buying,
> but I would just like to know "why" are they so expensive. Is it
> really that hard to make that you have to pay up to 6k to own one. I
> could by a near new Honda for that price. Can someone explain to me
> why these things cost as much as they do? And do you think that the
> cost of such machines would go down in the future. I can understand
> the supply and demand issue, but why is health in this country costing
> more then what most can afford. Everytime I go to the doctor and have
> to fill out a perscription I go online and get them from Canada and
> pay 1/4 of the price they charge at my local pharmacy....but thats a
> different issue :) Thanks to any and all that reply.