Schumacher tyres = expensive [my personal moan!]

[Fiddybux]

Hi all racers,

I'm sure this is something that everyone can agree with...why are tyres, for example, Schumacher pins/spikes/whatever so damn expensive?

It's nuts. Okay you do the research into a good compound that works, then you make a mould, and from that you can produce millions of tyres.

It must cost them about £1 per pair of tyres (probably a lot less), and yet we pay £7.49 + everytime we need some new grip.

If you ask me, Schumacher have something here that is probably more profitable than the tabacco industry....except it doesn't kill you (only the soul inside of you!)

Please feel free to add to my moan here.

Grrr.

[Southwell]

As is everything expensive in the UK....lifes a bitch, yadayada. :P

[bigred5765]

at £20000-30000 for a mould would charge 6-7 quid for them also
but i still think there dear

[losixxx]

a mould cost upwards of £20,000 plus you have to have it refurbished every so many pairs, the suppliers make there cut so do the shops so £8 is expensive but losi and prolines are near £10 a pair, yes you do get inserts but still more expensive than schy's

[Richard Lowe]

I think the mould has paid for itself it's fair to say!

They charge whatever they can get away with, and I bet it costs them a lot less than a quid to make a pair these days...

[jimmy]

Who says they dint get the mould made in china on the cheap ?

Seriously though, I agree with rich

[losixxx]

£60-£90,000 worth of moulds at say £3 profit per pair is still a hell of a lot of tyres to sell before they even start making money so in that respect i don't. how many tyres per year in spikes do you think they actually sell? even averaging it out to £70000 for the mould they will need to have sold 23,000 pairs of tyres before any profit is shown

[jimmy]

A hell of a lot would be my guess! I think it's pretty obvious Tyres are profitable for them. The ones that aren't get ditched.

[DCM]

I find it hard to beleive that a mould costs that much to make. And yes, the mould would need refurbishing/replacing occaisionaly, but I realy find it hard to justify the high cost, but it is like everything, we need it, they set their price, and until someone undercuts them with an equivalent tyre, they ain't going to budge.

More so, they don't do any developement work these days in tyres, I remember Bibx and stuff.

[jimmy]

Losixxx din't mention that 65k of that 70k was spent finding someone who could operate the machinery in the first place .

[losixxx]

Originally Posted by jimmy

Losixxx din't mention that 65k of that 70k was spent finding someone who could operate the machinery in the first place .

the 65k was the import tax/customs charge, mould cost 5k from korea

[jimmy]

[mark christopher]

not 100% sure but i thought they made thier moulds in house, though im trying to remember from 98 is when i was a team driver
certainly no dearer than on road tc

[spenner]

can't believe we are moaning about the price of schuey tyres!!!
Most people can get through a day on one set of these tyres, at £8 that works out pretty cheap. Pro lines and Losi tyres lucky to get decent 2nd run £10. I do agree they aren't cheap but if you ran a business would you cut your income ????????

[Jony]

Ok, let's get AutoCAD fired up.

http://www.protomold.co.uk/Default.aspx

The tooling cost with these guys seems to be closer to the £2k mark than the £20k mark, so I reckon we can make a killing. I'll do the drawing if somebody else provides the money

[jimmy]

lol

I don't think anyones really 'having a go' at schumacher - just the general costs of racing which everyone knows isn't cheap.

[Jony]

Get your pre-orders in! Announcing the "Jony Maxi Spike":



Available in a variety of compounds including polystyrene and plaster of paris. £6 per pair, paypal to [email protected] .

[jimmy]

what cad program did you use?? put me down for some

[jimmy]

If anyone does actually fancy designing a tyre, MedialPRO have a competition to design some RallyX tyres on their website here:

http://www.medialpro.com/concours_ang.html

I opened the file up - realised how 'techie' it was and got bored.. Yeah I can draw a cool tyre, but I don't wanna write numbers down - dayaaam.

[Alfonzo]

The tooling would have been expensive. The profits at this stage, X years down the line must be good but I don't think we should begrudge Schumacher that. They have to make money somewhere, and I'm sure it must be a struggle to make much on kits, to be honest. Of course, we could buy them out of China and help further the demise of our own homegrown manufacturing..