Why the price difference on Leupold

BROCOLT: you miss the point. yes there is paperwork, but it doesn't cost $150-$300 per scope to ship here. the paperwork is for the entire shipment not each piece. i once brought back 300,000 rounds of 9mm for the rcmp and their price was not much less than retail and within a reasonable amount of what they pay in the U.S.. (i was a truck driver and it was part of my load).
and yes i do see prices because they have to be on the invoice for customs.
let's face it we are being gouged and most of the time it is the distributor.
if you knew what retailers like sears pay for stuff and what they charge us it would make you sick. why is it a product made in canada and sold in the U.S.
is so much cheaper there than here. if you check the wholesale price you will see it is higher here. WHY!
freight costs and export permits do not justify the difference.
 
Bullzeye I have to agree. I used to live in the UK which the distributors and middle men refer to as "Treasure Island" because of the markup they can get away with. Not just shooting products just about anything they can get away with.

To give you a current example a Leupold 6.5-20x50

UK price £844 equivalent to $1300 (including tax)
Canada $1300 (including taxes)
US $890

I appreciate the market is a lot bigger in the US but even so a few people are doing very well out of importing goods to the UK and Canada. The last Leupold I bought in the US before the current restrictions was the same in US$ as the UK price in Sterling. This was at a time when £1 = $1.80 now that is gouging no question about it.
 
Leopold is a private enterprise and its management has an obligation to return the maximum profit to its owners. Same thing with the Canadian distributors and Canadian retailers. If we don't like it, we have plenty of other options in quality scopes.

Leopold's higher premium probably shows that Canadians place a proportionally higher value on Leopold scopes then Americans. And the manufacturer, distributor, and retailers and exercising good business sense by exploiting our valuation.
 
I think it is a little unrealistic to look at this price disparity in terms of what you can buy in the US vs CAD. It is a bit more complex then Leupold Scope X = $###.xxUSD and converting equals $###.xx CAD. If you compare a bulk buyer in the US to a small store in Canada you are going to find a large disparity in price based on size of order, conversion, and importation fee. Example:

I have $20,000 to stock Nikon Buck Master Scopes which say cost 200 bucks each. That means at dealer pricing say (say there is a price break for buying more then 100 scopes at 150/scope) Theoretically I could get 133 scopes at dealer cost maybe even a price break and I would import them and pay the associated fees fo in then end retail it for a little bit more then the USD (say 210).

If I wanted to do the same with a Leupold Mark 4 which is say retail 1500 dollars for scope and the wholesale is 1400 I could get 14 scopes at this price which means the import and associated fees may make it over 1600-1700 to sell here. At 20,000 I may not even qualify for a price break from the wholesale outlet who may want more money to give a break.

None of this factors dollar changes/variations or shipping fees. I am not defending retailers here, I am just presenting a different view on why higher end stuff is more expensive here (the original topic is Leupold but it really applies to all the higher end optics - Swarovski, Leica, etc). I have seen a lot of price variation on rifles to scopes from USD to CAD. It sucks but I don't think it would be a fair comparison to compare our retailers to the US retailers who can purchase a heck of a lot more product and have a much larger audience to sell to. Just something to consider...
 
we donot feel we should pay a premium just because we value the quality of a leupold scope. the americans don't. also look at the quality of a leupold now as compared to 10 years ago. not even close. even benchrest shooters complain about the quality of the br scopes.
you also talk about buying power. what about cabelas here in winnipeg. show me who sells more leupold than them other than maybe wholesale sports and they also have buying power and they have how many stores in canada and i believe they have 18 stores in the U.S.. they bought out spotsman wharehouse.
quit thinking like a liberal and face the facts we are being screwed over by the canadian distributors or the american manufacturers.
why is the base price of a car or whatever that is made here and also sold in the U.S. higher in canada even after you account for the exchange on the $.
hell even the cars have more options there for what they pay than here.
now don't get me wrong the small guy can't compete. but why is it if we go to all the trouble to bring something in our own why is it cheaper?
 
Due to improvement in CDN/US $ we have just lowered our retail prices on most Leupold optics. We had different mark-ups that varied depending on the value of optic and thus the higher end products had a lower mark up. VX-7's went down the most because Leupold had a factory wholesale price reduction. A few prices only went down a couple % while some went down about 17% (see post in our CGN dealer section for some comparison). Our new prices are now on our web site. Due to the volume of sales of Leupold products, we carry a significant amount of inventory that was purchased at the higher prices and these had to be lowered as well. Due to availability issues during the various seasons we carry a substantial inventory of Leupold products and are seldom out of stock. I believe we carry the largest single in store selection of Leupold products in Canada. Phil.
 
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