If $200 is the mystical magic number, it would be worth that not to deal with customs, import tax, broker fees, oops it got lost in shipping, oops it was dropped out of an aeroplane then run over by a forklift headaches. Try dealing with a damaged item when it was shipped from the manufacturer overseas. It can take months to get it worked out. If you think the roaster is too expensive, then dont get it. You have obviously never worked in a distribution facility. The logistics to simply get a container of them in country is a nightmare, then the labour to warehouse them, pack them for shipping, deal with customer phone calls, shipping damage, inventory management, there is a lot involved. By the time your overhead is covered, you are making pennies on the dollar. Then someone drops a box and damages a unit in the warehouse. Now your profit is gone for the entire shipment and you are working for free, or in the hole.

Nik wrote:Some look at who we buy from differently than others. A relationship with anyone based on price is like a home built on quicksand. I prefer to buy from humans that are honest and dependable. Saving a couple hundred bucks is not going to help me balance my budget one bit but knowing that good people behind where I buy something is important. There is comfort to know if something is wrong with anything bought from Sweet Maria's that I don't have to worry about dealing with people with attitudes, runarounds, insults and delays in getting it resolved.

Ken, we all read about your ongoing saga in dealing with your GS3 a year or so back. My gut feeling is that if it had been available from Sweet Maria's it would have taken one call to resolve it.

We are so lucky to have a Sweet Maria's and I seriously doubt if they hadn't brought it into their inventory I would own one.

Note to Tom.....find us some exceptional DP Ethiopian greens please!

Bob

When we buy anything in the open marketplace, a complex calculus comes into play. If it is a widely available commodity item, then most of us will buy on price. If it is an item that requires service and/or a relationship with the seller, most intelligent purchasers will take that into consideration, and other factors can become more important than getting the lowest price. And, yes, I did get caught up in that "GS/3 Fire Sale" mentality when I originally bought the espresso machine; this was a mistake for which I paid in lost sleep and aggravation. And I stated as much.

When the M3's availability in the US from SM/CS first came up, I did not believe that there was an exclusive given and that people could purchase the machine from whomever they wished (directly with support from the mfr., as I had done, or at a bit higher price from SM/CS with support from them). Other individuals posting on the earlier thread(s) stated that an exclusive had been given to CS. I questioned whether this was the case and only after people verified that their attempts to buy directly had been refused did I believe what they had said about an exclusive. This assumption has been present in M3 discussion threads here for months, and it is a good thing that Tom has clarified that this is not true.

In any small market niche, such as home barista equipment and green beans sold to home roasters, there is a tendency for the consumers to view their commercial relationships with vendors as being more than the simple transaction of business. I have seen this in several other hobbies and interests, as well as in home coffee. Maybe the relationship is more casual than what you see with business to business commerce, but it remains at its core a buying and selling commercial relationship, and should be viewed as such.

ken

cannonfodder wrote:If $200 is the mystical magic number, it would be worth that not to deal with customs, import tax, broker fees, oops it got lost in shipping, oops it was dropped out of an aeroplane then run over by a forklift headaches. Try dealing with a damaged item when it was shipped from the manufacturer overseas. It can take months to get it worked out. If you think the roaster is too expensive, then dont get it. You have obviously never worked in a distribution facility. The logistics to simply get a container of them in country is a nightmare, then the labour to warehouse them, pack them for shipping, deal with customer phone calls, shipping damage, inventory management, there is a lot involved. By the time your overhead is covered, you are making pennies on the dollar. Then someone drops a box and damages a unit in the warehouse. Now your profit is gone for the entire shipment and you are working for free, or in the hole.

There's nothing mystical or magical about $200, but neither is that added expense buying anything I need or want. It sounds like for you the equation is different.

godshot wrote:There's nothing mystical or magical about $200, but neither is that added expense buying anything I need or want. It sounds like for you the equation is different.

And we may have here a pretty classic "lose-lose relationship." Here we have a low volume producer with a good but simple product that has a very small market and limited economies of scale. The producer has a completely useless website and no idea whatsoever about how to promote their business. The product is purchased largely based on word of mouth, often related to online posts on obscure web forums like HB.

Enter SM's and Tom. I'm assuming the manufacturer was contacted and was unable or unwilling to wholesale the units at a price that would allow a real retailer markup. This is more or less consistent with what happened when a group of people from the coffee forums got together and tried to do a "group buy" with the manufacturer -- it was rejected. Language problems haven't helped.

In a normal marketplace for a product serving more than a tiny niche of users, someone else (probably plural) would have come in, stolen the best ideas present in the M3, and captured the market. Given the relatively small market for this sort of thing, instead, the market stagnates, people become pissed off, and we get to where we are.

This product, better with a slightly larger usable batch size, is exactly what the high end home roaster would want, however the price is a little bit too high and the niche is a little bit too small.

ken

Ken Fox wrote:
In a normal marketplace for a product serving more than a tiny niche of users, someone else (probably plural) would have come in, stolen the best ideas present in the M3, and captured the market. Given the relatively small market for this sort of thing, instead, the market stagnates, people become pissed off, and we get to where we are.

Yup, pretty much sums it up.
The problem is we can't produce anything in this country for a small market like ours. Making something like what we want as homeowner/hobby there's no way to deal with UL or the cost of liability in this sue crazy country. I know a few metal magicians who made a couple parts for my roaster and they were really interested in the possibility of doing something.

When I contacted the manufacturer back in October, I was quoted $920 + $130 shipping to Canada. Did we ever establish whether CoffeeShrub is providing a warranty and such for the extra money?

farmroast wrote:Yup, pretty much sums it up.
The problem is we can't produce anything in this country for a small market like ours. Making something like what we want as homeowner/hobby there's no way to deal with UL or the cost of liability in this sue crazy country. I know a few metal magicians who made a couple parts for my roaster and they were really interested in the possibility of doing something.

One solution would be to design something that could be assembled to be a coffee roaster but would lack a few key parts such as a heat source. Call it a desk ornament or whatever. Design it so that it could easily be converted into a coffee roaster with the addition of a few off the shelf parts, but package it with warning stickers and instructions saying that under no circumstances should it be used to roast anything, especially coffee beans.

Maybe that would work.

ken

Chris,

I did question about the warranty and received a note from Maria stating that it is a year.

In my opinion their price of $150 more than direct from mfg. is not much to assume the risk, handling, inventory investment, import fees and warranty. Peace of mind knowing that SM will always be there for service support and parts is worth something to me anyway.

Bob_McBob wrote:When I contacted the manufacturer back in October, I was quoted $920 + $130 shipping to Canada. Did we ever establish whether CoffeeShrub is providing a warranty and such for the extra money?

Ken Fox wrote:One solution would be to design something that could be assembled to be a coffee roaster but would lack a few key parts such as a heat source. Call it a desk ornament or whatever. Design it so that it could easily be converted into a coffee roaster with the addition of a few off the shelf parts, but package it with warning stickers and instructions saying that under no circumstances should it be used to roast anything, especially coffee beans.

Maybe that would work.

ken

This approach has been mentioned for years but I've never been able to verify whether or not it's a valid option.

Ken Fox wrote:One solution would be to design something that could be assembled to be a coffee roaster but would lack a few key parts such as a heat source. Call it a desk ornament or whatever. Design it so that it could easily be converted into a coffee roaster with the addition of a few off the shelf parts, but package it with warning stickers and instructions saying that under no circumstances should it be used to roast anything, especially coffee beans.

Maybe that would work.

ken

This just has been done in Germany called "Röstbiene" (roasting bee) as it looks a bit like one;)

<http://www.kaffee-netz.de/vom-rohkaffee-zum-selbstr-ster/43911-r-stbiene-ich-hab-sie-endlich.html>

The gas heating source (a key part;) shown in the first picture on that page is not part of the Röstbiene and has to be added.

M.