[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Ron99

I don't think that is a completely fair assessment. PFO used Phillips Luxeon emitters in their fixtures from day one. Now I have spent around $1200 to $1300 so far to buy parts for my DIY 48" fixture and that is with very good volume pricing through the nano-reef group buy for alot of it and also includes a free housing and cheap used heatsinks from eBay.

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how many LED's you putting on that sucker ?? I think I am spending 600.00 total on a 30" long unit using 40 degree optics, and nothing was free or cheep..

the luxton stars were 1 watt leds, and at the time they were making the solaris they were cheeper than we can get the crees for, but that doesn't matter much.. what we get as a group buy is nothing compared to what a company can get things for. I know when I had my company going and I was looking at buying a significant quantity of something if I couldn't get it for about 1/3 of the retail price I would shop elsewhere. I never had to look around much. generaly I found there are 3 price ranges, retail, wholesale, and distrubitor. I am working on a deal right now that will get me distrubitor+ pricing on a produce that the rights to BA/AB with a few exclusions. nothing to do with the aquarium industry but the structure is the same.

Basicly I know a guy who has the canadian distrubution rights to a line of products, he has a few avenues that he sells directly to in a specific industry. I can sell to any industry but the one he sells directly to and my cost is his cost plus 10%. when I sell to a company I am oblagated to sell at a lower price than if I sold directly to the public otherwise why would a company buy the product to resell. so lets pick a number of 100 bucks. I buy the product for 110.00 because of my deal, so for wholesale I sell at 180 to 200. for retail I would charge 280.

with the group buys we are involved with in the diy fish tank things, we are dealing with retailers so the price we get is going to be better than if you go to a store and buy a product, but not anywhere near wholesale and distrubitor. now what would be ideal is if we had some one with a reg company that could contact cree sales directly and order a large volume. you would probably see the price down about 2 bucks a LED. same thing would apply to the heat sink, if I knew I would use 100 30X10 heat sinks, you could probably get at least 50% off the regular price and if you were to do some digging and find the smelter that actualy makes them and they are a generic die, not customer owned you could get them cheeper.

at anyrate I digress. the company PFO makes it, sends it to there distrubitors and then the distrubitors sell to the stores so something that costs 3500 in the store probably cost the store about 2500-3000 (usaly less mark up on expensive stuff), would cost the distrubitor rep about 1500 to 2000, and the company about 700 to 1000. if there made off shore then you can cut that number way down. I am just pulling numbers out of my a$$ here, but the idea is that there are usaly 3 or 4 steps along the way and usaly each one of thoes steps is 50 to 100% mark up on pricy things, and more on cheep things.

Steve