We always have to remember that with a new writing instrument release, the retail price will not be high enough to swiftly recoup R&D and tooling costs. It takes time… but, within some reasonable time, the profit margin begins to widen, and in some cases rather dramatically if they can get away with price increases.
Who knows what the R&D and tooling cost impact on Uni was for the Kuru Toga Dive. But if it was high, I’d have definitely expected the list price on USA available sites would’ve been more like $75 instead of $40 USD.
Someone running that product management or sales team must’ve let scalper behavior influence them too much… motivating them to take a risk at $99 USD. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. If they don’t sell enough, we may see periodic sales later. In fact, maybe we’re all being played right now. Perhaps they thought $60 USD would be a more palatable price for the Dive, but Uni worried buyers might not be so motivated when remembering the previous $40 USD price. So, instead price it at $99 USD and let it sit there for some months. Then, run a brief sale discounting down to $60 USD. That might trigger more aggressive sales than if they’d priced it at $60 USD for the normal retail price. Just my guess.
Welll, I heard back from Uni. This was their explanation:
“We 100% understand your frustration and are sorry for the inconvenience. We increased the price to combat resellers! We had an issue with people buying a bunch and reselling them to their audience.”
Seems a bit of a low grade response. Combatting resellers? Didn’t they make the purchase method when priced at $40 USD limited to 1 per person? Or was it 1 color per person, up to 3 pencils? I imagine some people would get around this by leveraging different email accounts and addresses (send to friends/family). But there are ways to check for potential exploitation of imposed limits.
From what I understand there are buying services one can employ to obtain multiples of items that are limited. Some deviants must’ve really exploited this… snapping them up at $40 and reselling at $100. Human behavior… these days, it seems nothing is off the table for exploitation and profiteering.
You could buy up to 3 dives from the website, I think. With just one account. Well, you can still do it now, on the website it says “limited to 3 items per person”.
Eventually the fervor over this model will subside… and prices will come down. I’m in no hurry. I’m going to wait it out. No way the Dive will be discontinued for at least a few years.
I lost the fervor the second this pencil came out. The entire reason I love mechanical pencils is the chisel; “technology” to remove it seems idiotic to me. Just use 0.2 or 0.3 instead!
There should be no worries about it getting discontinued. The hype about the dive in Japan is unparalleled. I do think that prices will plummet at some point, a large portion of the current stock is held by people who just wanted to flip it for money and once Uni starts to keep up with the demand, they will freak out and sell.
Do you guys think the 3 original (Japan only) release versions will be “collectible” or go up in value?
I think that the 2nd edition ones will stay at the current prices, the 1st edition one (in particular, boxed units) will keep rising in price.
Something important about the 1st edition one is that it wasn’t that hard to get, you could just put a reservation one week in advance and the insane hype was not there yet, so many students could get one. Those kids now don’t know what to do with a 30000-40000 JPY pen and are selling them. The stock isn’t that large and once they end up in collector’s hands the price will keep rising. Also I suspect that some people will want all colors, just like some want all kerries or all smashes, so the demand will always be there.
I wonder if some people are buying the Abyss Blue as a kind of homage to the first release color, a slightly lighter shade of metallic blue. And of course, it’s not farfetched to expect some people will try to capitalize on ignorance and sell off an Abyss Blue as if it was a 1st release. Average seller integrity these days just becomes more anemic as time goes on. I won’t comment on the cultural movement of making lying an acceptable habit.
I have to wonder if people who are reselling it are doing this, to help keep prices inflated. But there will be a breaking point… enough people will have them, uninterested in buying more… and new buyers diminished.
