Pass the sunglasses, Gibson have been in the paint box again...

[BucketheadRules]

How did you arrive at that figure?

It's just a guess, plucked it out of the air

But my thought is that if Tokai's Japanese factory can make and sell a Les Paul which is (speaking as objectively as possible) as good as, or better than a Gibson, for under a grand, then Gibson are probably making some truly gigantic profit margins.

Even the very best Tokais are barely over £1000 most of the time.

[meltedbuzzbox]

this 4 grand tokai disagrees with you

http://www.tokai-guitars.co.uk/index...mart&Itemid=31

I used to think that was the case too but they do have guitars in the 1k and 2k brackets

[Sporky_McGuffin]

It's just a guess, plucked it out of the air

But my thought is that if Tokai's Japanese factory can make and sell a Les Paul which is (speaking as objectively as possible) as good as, or better than a Gibson, for under a grand, then Gibson are probably making some truly gigantic profit margins.

They may well be, but without access to the labour costs, factory overheads and so on it's impossible to say. I suspect you're not enormously out (if you start with £600, add a 30% markup for Gibson, a 30% markup for the distributor, then add VAT and another 30% markup for the retailer you'd end up at £1580). Start at £950 to make the thing (including labour and overheads) and you'd end up selling at £2500 for the same %age markups.

It really depends on labour costs - assembly is the most expensive part of most manufactured goods.

[monquixote]

They may well be, but without access to the labour costs, factory overheads and so on it's impossible to say. I suspect you're not enormously out (if you start with £600, add a 30% markup for Gibson, a 30% markup for the distributor, then add VAT and another 30% markup for the retailer you'd end up at £1580). Start at £950 to make the thing (including labour and overheads) and you'd end up selling at £2500 for the same %age markups.

It really depends on labour costs - assembly is the most expensive part of most manufactured goods.

Would be interesting to know what the typical markup is in various places in the chain for guitars. In a lot of retail it can be 250% or much higher than that.

[Sporky_McGuffin]

When I sold pedals through retailers the markup they put on was darned close to 30% - I think that's a fairly normal level.

[littlethoughts]

I actually quite like all the colours, but then I've never been one for more traditional 'burst finishes.

[musophilr]

I'll always prefer sunburst and natural finishes, but if you must have them painted, these paint jobs look OK from what I've seen.

You can hide any old firewood underneath a paint job.

[Rocker]

A Les Paul can't cost more than about £600 to make.

Usually the manufacturing costs are around 20% of the retail price. Give or take a penny or two....

[Rox]

When I worked in retail (for my sins) the big companies could set the cost price at whatever they liked if it was a product you couldn't get elsewhere.

I worked for a huge chain of stores (so this wasn't as if it was a small store without clout being squeezed), and the cost price for a new release Disney VHS (shows how long ago it was!) was £13.07 - when the video was being sold at £12.99. For every video they sold, they were subsidising the customer by 8p!

The retailers don't get huge markups, especially on bigger names. This is in part why a lot of supermarkets are moving toward promoting 'branded' own brand products.

Mind you, I love the look of the green one. Is there something wrong with me?

[thereformant]

I quite like the purple and blue ones.