Hello Mirko,
Given current silver nitrate prices (as of late October 2010), we’re facing price rises once again. This is particularly true for films, and especially for sheet films.
Well, of course. When I buy silver nitrate from a chemist as an end customer, 25g (a ridiculously expensive tiny amount) costs me almost exactly €25.
Now let’s assume we’re developing medium-format films with a silver content of approx. 3g/m². That would require almost exactly 4.72g/m² of silver nitrate (let’s ignore process losses for now).
Per 35mm film
(1.65m x 40mm – roughly calculated), that works out to a
cost
of
€0.31
for the oh-so-expensive
silver
.
That means a 15% increase in the price of silver nitrate would require a price mark-up of less than five cents! Assuming silver nitrate prices are set at levels far removed from the market.
Please do not justify necessary price increases with rising silver prices any longer. These do not have nearly as much of an impact, especially as you do not pay a euro per gram.
A better justification would be that labour costs are also rising in Croatia, the Czech Republic or even Belgium, and that the company’s property costs, as well as its borrowing costs, are a steadily increasing factor. But that probably doesn’t fit the image customers expect of an artistic do-gooder shop.
If you’re referring to Ilford’s list prices, that’s true, of course, but market prices in Germany (which we also have to base our pricing on) are 20–45% lower and are so tight that everyone involved (including Ilford) is operating just above the break-even point.
Which is why, when it comes to selling Ilford products, one retailer after another is going bust.
Please don’t get me wrong, but I dislike this whingeing about bankruptcy-driven fixed prices just as much as I dislike ludicrous justifications for what are surely sensible price adjustments.
Best regards,
Franz
