A Coat Tale.

[Mechanic-AL]

My old Gortex rain jacket was born to me out of the side pocket of a set of hire clubs from the Richmond Golf Club. A week or two after diligently handing it in I returned to the course to liberate a few more divots from their fairways and noticed the coat still sitting unclaimed on an office shelf. When I let it be know that I was the honest soul who had handed it in 'weeks and weeks ago' the course caretaker declared me to be the rightful new owner and casually lobbed it over the counter to me. That raincoat went on to serve me well for around 15 years. But when I recently pulled it out in preparation for another foray into the bush I had to admit it was showing it's age. The gusset stiching under the right arm had given up the ghost, there where skanky squashed leech stains inside it and most frustratingly the zipper had depreciated to a point where the force required to do it up quite often resulted in a perfectly directed self uppercut to the chin.
So off I went to find a new rain jacket. Now I'm not one to frequent outdoor shops regularly. They always seem to have exorbitantly priced gear that I really should have but can't afford or crappy rubbish that fit's comfortably into the budget but is really just.........well,crappy rubbish. When I first began flipping price tags on the coat rack my first thoughts were that some poorly supervised work experience kid had been mistakenly putting tent price tags on the coats. I'm mean how can something that 2 or even sometimes 3 people can squeeze into cost less that a coat that only fits a half a person at best ?? When I realized the prices I was looking at really were for the coats my palms became clammy, some minor heart palpitations kicked in and my credit card began to squirm uncomfortably in my hip pocket. After annoying the hell out of staff in 5 different shops I returned home empty handed. But... I had an early winter walk into the Walls of Jerusalem on the slow burner and judging by the way the low pressure systems had being getting in line to cartwheel across the synoptic charts going without a good form of rain protection was not on.The following morning I returned to the coat racks. I had just picked out a coat that only narrowly missed being classified as crappy rubbish when my eye caught a much more impressive looking product on a coat hanger above. The price tag on this one threatened to blow my' recreation budget'. into the same stratosphere as the national debt. I mumbled a few semi audible expletives as I placed this $800 coat back on the rack. But hang on,what's this? On the back of the label was a tiny red sticker bearing those magic words " SALE PRICE". A closer inspection revealed the once 800 buck coat was now available for the amazing price of just $299 ! When I tried it on and it actually wasn't a bad fit my credit card began to jiggle excitedly again. After asking all the relevant questions like "does my bum look big in this"? I was hooked. " Are you in our club?" the young sales chickie asked. Stuffed if I could remember ever having joined their club but when she punched in my details there I was. A fully bona fide club member entitled to a further club discount which resulted in the 299 clam coat free falling even further to an awesome price of just $239!! I had to resist the urge to bolt from the shop after paying before beaker brain discovered that there had been some monumental stuff up with the pricing.

To cut a long story short I headed off to The Walls a couple of days later and had 4 awesome days with nothing more than some low clouds. Not a friggin spec of rain. Totally unbelievable!! Zeus the rain god must have been on annual leave in the Bali or somewhere! To add to the irony in all this I'm now back in Western Australia watching reports of the catastrophic floods that have occurred. If ever there was a test for a raincoat........

But what I'm really struggling to get my head around is how an $800.00 rain jacket can eventually be sold off at $239 bucks and presumably still return a profit margin to the seller. Just how much profit would there have been in this sale if somebody had actually parted with 800 big ones in the first place

I guess I shouldn't complain. Last jacket was a freebie, this one was $239. I'm still way ahead of anyone unfortunate enough to have been stung the full eight hundred

[DarrenM]

Lovely tale!
I'm still wearing a jacket bought over 15 years ago at work. Good quality is worth the $$$

[Mark F]

Anaconda, Kathmandu and others have a pricing policy which starts by selling the product at about twice the reasonable price which is why they have lots of sales where the product will be 40-60% off and now a reasonable price but fully priced. Eventually they have the occasional real sale - end of season, end of line where they now just want the product gone and now a bargain price. Well done on picking up the jacket at a bargain price.

[GPSGuided]

Per Mark's. RRP from those shops is a joke, never to be believed. What sounded like a massive sale may just barely be competitive with other brands out there.

[Xplora]

I bought a raincoat many years ago in the middle of one of the longest droughts. It was really cheap because they could not sell any. I didn't really need it at the time but I figured it had to rain some day and sure enough it did. This was probably one of the best investments you have made in your walking future.

[Mechanic-AL]

I was always under the impression that retail prices were derived from approximately 100 to 120% mark up on whatever price the product was originally bought in for. Obviously outdoor shops have their own set of rules for calculating RRP. ( much like surf shops ).

The reason I was given for the price of my coat falling off a cliff was that it was "Last Years Style". Apparently there had also been some "minor changes" to the materials used to make the coat. I find the notion that a collective of dirty,smelly, leech infested bushwalkers would be so style concious that they would be happy to part with an additional $500.00 just to be seen in the lastest seasons style. ( all apologies to the rare breed of imacculately clean bushwalkers out there ).

I haven't been able to bring myself to remove the price label yet. The next time I,m sitting around a campsite with a bunch of like minded souls I might just umm....flop it out....and watch them all turn green with envy !!

[Moondog55]

Love the way you wrote the tale
I often feel the same way when shopping at the Big Box stores and only buy there when the sales are on

[zac150]

theoretically the cost of an item should have three factors, the cost to produce an item, the price consumers are willing to pay and the price competitions are selling similar items for.

If you consider a company that simply copies items produced by others research and development there cost base is a whole lot lower than say a company that comes up with new products and tests them before hitting the shelves.

Long and the short of it is the company that can sell a product 75% off probably has a lower cost base and therefore they can cover the lower sale price (probably because they have sold some at full price). Some of the companies that copy R and D can produce some good stuff but do they always get the mix right? Who knows.

Personally I like brands have sponsored athletes and brand partners, yep part of the sale price is going toward paying them but they are also the Guinea pigs making sure the gear works before it hits the shelves.

[Gadgetgeek]

One other factor that I suspect is to play, is that some products have a shelf life. So its better for the store to sell the product at a discount and get it out the door before its lifespan is up, so that at the very least they have reduced their liability on it, should it come in for refund. I would also suspect that there are some tax type maths happening that will work themselves into the store's benefit over time.

My work issued coat is a very high end MD jacket that was barely used by the guy who had it before me, and yet it wets out quickly, even after re-treatment, and the tape is starting to let go from the seams. they only last so long.