Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I know it's probably been asked plenty of times.. but will we ever see Paul C Buff/AlienBees/Einstein/WL make it's landing in the UK?
I know - just through networking online alone - over a dozen people from the UK who would jump at the chance for reasonable priced lighting like Paul's. I understand it wouldn't be easy.. and I also understand it's possible to buy from AUS.. but are you ever planning on bringing your products over here?
All the best. :shock:

Thankfully while reading some previous posts I may of find the answer to my question..
Under the thread: 'How is progress on the Einstein?', Paul mentioned some of the things which may be holding back the Einstein release date.

Here's what Paul said:

Quote:

Pre orders are now 1600 so it's going to be hard to get one real fast for the first couple of months.

Projecting this stuff is really tough, I assure you. Can't find my magic wand in the midst of all the parts and stuff I have piled up in front of me. Also fighting tooth and nail with PLM vendors to keep them in stock, plus working on EU distribution and several future products/accessories. Can't find top notch tech management so Luap is a busy boy. Keep getting resumes from copy machine repairmen! Any real technical VPs out there?

What I like to hear :)!

A UK deal is now in the works. It will probably take about two months to get going, partially because we have to clean up our Einstein backlog before we consider expanding distribution to Europe.

Paul, you're about the make many people VERY happy..
I hope everything goes to plan for the UK/Europe and wish you all the best with your new products!

But don't expect the same price as USA. Europe has VAT, shipping from USA to UK and the partner's profit.

Of corse those things will be kept in mind.. I still believe your products will be at a better price for the quality than anything over here at the moment.
Are you able to say who a deal is in the works with over here? Name of the company or anything? And will you be releasing more information on this anytime soon? I'm sure many people would be interested.

Colin Smith, who is our selling partner in Australia is a UK native and is setting this up with his brother who still resides in UK and another electronics engineer partner who will be in charge of service. It will start small and evolve. The arrangement was just settled on last week so it will take a bit of time - particularly for us to ramp up Einstein production enough to fill all of our pre orders and to be able to begin shipping to UK.

Colin has done a good job for us and is an honest person who cares about his customers and isn't greedy. AU customers complain about the price of course, but you have to consider that our operation is direct to customer so there is nobody between our company and our customers to mark the product up. Plus, except in our home state of Tennessee there is no sales tax, VAT, customs, etc. That is why our US price to quality ratio is low.

Since we have no middleman profit built into our business model we have little room for discounts to a dealer like Colin, so that alone means his profit mostly has to be added to the USA price - he gets only a small discount from us. On top of that, the quantities in AU are not large enough to allow ocean freight shipping, so it goes by air freight in consolidated shipments, and that is very expensive (though much less than direct Fedex or UPS package shipping.) Then he must add AU VAT tax and his profit - which is not terribly high.

The same conditions will exist in UK, though the shipping to Europe is less than to AU and eventually we will be able to do ocean freight once the volume permits. But EU VAT taxes are higher.

Were we to go a more standard route, and actually use a distributor and camera stores, another layer of markup would add even more to the user prices.

So Europe will be handled much like the USA, with direct to customer sales and service via Paul C. Buff, UK

This is great news :)
I was doing some rough calculations earlier and you're selling a single Einstein 640 unit for $440 (US Dollars) in the USA. In Australia it works out to be around $590 (US Dollars). So in Australia people are buying the products for around 35% more than the US price? Is that about right?
If that's correct, what do you expect the price of the Einstein to be in the UK? I believe anywhere up to an extra 50% on top of the US price seems about a reasonable price over here. Will it be higher than an extra 50% price wise?
I hope that makes sense..

That's about right and there is no way to avoid it. The real key is to compare Einstein and Cyber Commander to other products you can buy in Europe in terms of performance and price.

So over here in Spain will we soon have an option for buying the Alien Bees from the UK?