(no subject)

[ewt]

Pretty! but surely they can be made for less than $200...

Comments

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Pretty indeed; however the cost of making them is going to depend on how they actually make the stainless steel part. A normal cufflink of that style is relatively simple to make on a lathe in a mass production environment. However fun happens when you need to hollow out parts of the metal to hold the battery, LED, etc. Its possible to do it on a mass production scale, but you'll need some quite funky machinery to do so.

I should note that the website says that these aren't made on a mass production basis, but by hand. If you think about the amount of work required to machine the metal on a lathe by hand, its not going to be that cheap to do. However it does depend on how much they make by hand and how much is stuff they've contracted out to production lines.

When looking at the cost of something like this, you've got the physical cost of the parts, the time required build them, the skillset required, the machines to machine the materials and how much you can charge from the target market. I think you'll probably find that the $200 charge is more a factor of the last one on that list!

In other words, they charge $200 as its what they can get away with :)

[devvie.livejournal.com]

If they are made by hand then I can see why it would be so costly.

[ali-in-london.livejournal.com]

Wow. Expensive, but wow (although definitely a daneel_olivaw thing rather than a me thing).

Now I'm wondering whether I can make the dollar fall through the floor by sheer will-power.

[cyberiantiger.livejournal.com]

Hrm, I would have thought this was the sort of thing you'd pick up in a random pound store in outer london. :)

It's amazing what a bit of marketing and a name beginning with 'i' can do.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Avoid wearing open-toed sandals near dangerous-looking spots on the floor. In fact, take care not to store anything in the basement that's fragile and likely to be damaged by falling dollars.

Hugo Chavez has gone public about moving all Venezuela's currency reserves out of dollar assets: it's only a couple of hundred billion, peanuts compared to the T-bill holdings of the Asia-Pacific region's manufacturing economies... But they probably don't like being lectured about free markets and morality by illiterate hicks with more campaign donations than sense, either.

Whether this will make the cufflinks cheaper in real money, or not, is another matter. It might not happen at all. Off-the-wall stuff like Russia decoupling energy exports from the dollar would make the nickel in them a lot more expensive. But people elsewhere in this discussion are probably right: labour costs, and whatever price the market will bear, are the main issues.

[martling.livejournal.com]

If I were making them...

2x 3mm blue LEDs: £0.80
3x 414 size (4.8mm diameter, 1.2mm high) rechargable cells: £4 at the most.
Offcut of stainless steel and an hour on the lathe: one beer, to Andy in the Physics workshop upstairs.

The look on the face of someone who paid $200: Priceless.

spiralflames health update

[humandays.livejournal.com]

greetings. you don't know me, but i'm a friend of spiralflames. she's been off lj for months, and i just talked to her on the phone and promised i'd let everyone on her friends list know, personally, how she was doing.

first, the bad news: her declining health of this year was due to undiagnosed ovarian cancer. it was finally properly diagnosed, and last week she had two tumors removed in an 11-hour operation, and one of them was gigantic.

the good news: the doctors feel that they got it all out, and with a course of chemo the prospects are bright.

now the fantastic news: spiralflames is beating all expectations with the rapidity of her recovery: within 2 days her blood chemistry was back to normal, and an expected stay of a week in ICU turned out to be one day.

she's kicking some serious ass. :)

if you'd like to send her a message of any kind, feel free to reply to this or to write me at foosi@comcast.net. if you need a phone number or address, write me and i'll get the info from her when i talk to her next. i'm sure she can use all the positive encouragement possible.

keep her in your thoughts. she's cherishing every minute of life right now and i'm sure she wants you to do the same.

[cyberiantiger.livejournal.com]

Quality comment :)