What Happened With Schaubek??

Here is a copy of a message I sent to Schaubek customer service in Germany today:

'I am looking to order additional sets of leaves for my collections, have bought several over the past 18 months.

Has there been a large price increase in your products? The prices you list on the website are perhaps 40% higher in may cases than in the last catalog I received, dated 2015. It appears I would in most cases now be better off obtaining these here locally.

Would appreciate some explanation as to what may have prompted this. I would also like a new catalog as the one I use is obviously out of date! Thank you. '

I know price increases are the norm. What I find astonishing is that in most cases prices for sets of country leaves have shot up at a rate way past something that could be accounted for by inflation. I am looking at their Austria pages. Most units for that album are up by at least ten Euros across the board. Some appear up by as much as 30% over what was on the site less than a year ago.

I know others on here use these, has anyone else noted this?

I don't buy printed pages, but this and similar things are probably economy-of-scale issues. Say, for example, that it costs a publisher $5000 to design some album pages. If they anticipate selling 5000 units, their design costs are only $1 per unit. Now, say they only think they'll sell 500 units, their design cost is now $10 a unit. This is a fixed cost that they've incurred before making a single sale, and they have to plan on recouping that somehow. If they're selling fewer page units (which they probably are) they need to raise their prices accordingly to cover all their fixed costs. They may also get less favorable pricing from printers or paper suppliers, etc, if they sell fewer overall units.

Yes, the downloaded pages are killing album publishers. These price increases are simply stunning. In one instance a set of Austria pages listed at 38.50 Euros last year now is listed at 68.50. They are now asking for the standard pages as much as they did for hingeless a hear ago.

I wonder if this is happening with other publishers. I am heavily invested in their products and will continue to buy and use them. If I were just starting out, maybe not.

I agree that falling demand may cause an increase in prices so they can cover their fixed costs. Another factor to consider is that Schaubek may be raising its prices to reflect the exchange rate between the Dollar and the Euro. With a strong dollar, Schaubek gets fewer euros.
The obvious risk with that strategy is that demand might decrease.

Dan

The obvious part of this is that album publishers missed the technology boat and have no one to blame but themselves. I agree with Artful but would add that they have design NRE's (Non-recurring Engineering) costs AND also have additional fixed costs that go into the production of 'short runs' (setting up the machines, the production line, packaging, stocking, inventory costs, power, etc.). Keep in mind that publishers generally want huge production runs (ideally hundreds of thousands or more) to offset these costs.

The entire publishing industry has been turned on its head. Over the last 5-8 years 'online publishing companies' have decimated the legacy publishing companies; they are using economy of scale to their advantage. Frankly and given just how slow the philatelic publishers have adopted to these changes, I serious doubt that many will survive more than a few years. So at this point we might want to thank our lucky stars that this stuff is even still in production at any cost.
Don

Economic conditions in Germany also need to be considered. Since September, inflation has spiked, and February 2017 had the highest single month inflation in 4 1/2 years. Sudden inflation coupled with a weakening currency is a prescription for considerably higher prices. Run a graph of German inflation rates from 2014 to now and you will see that 2015 catalog prices probably were low and now necessarily have to jump higher.

Chris

The Scott country album sets have not gone up near as much per page.
Example I bought my US and Canada sets in 2013 and cost was 72¢ and 67.5¢ per page including albums, slip covers and labels
The cost today for the sets is 77¢ and 70¢ per page respectively for the similar sets
I used per page as the newer ones go to more recent dates.

Scott supplements today run about 95¢ per page on average, while Davo and Schaubek run around $1.40 for standard and $2.75 to $3.00 for hingeless.

Not sure if having to add mounts plus the pages is cheaper than buying hingeless but you can spread it out over time. Mounts aren't cheap any more, you need all different sizes, especially for the souvenir sheets, and a lot of work as well.

Just my 2¢ worth

I had noted recently that Scott's National supplement (18 pages / $20) and the Minuteman (18 pages/ $20) are the same price even though the National paper is significantly better. There are other factors involved in price setting. I also would suspect they have print runs that exceed the annual sales so they are sitting on a lot of inventory (cash tied up) but that is always a trade off. If you consider all the countries, there a a lot of SKUs to maintain. Amos has someone like Steiner but they want to make a lot more money.

I suspect Schaubek may be in difficulty. Their website is not being maintained, they used to have a link to a downloadable catalog. The only one they have now is for 2012. Due to some miracle I was able to get a print catalog from them two years back, the link on the site to request one is now disabled. They never respond to questions.

Add this to their big price increases and I am not sure what I get but whatever it is it isn't good for current users of their products.

The German version of their site has got big banner to their current price list: http://download.schaubek.de/files/d...2016_web.pdf

Likely they simply don't have the personnel / skills to maintain the non-German websites (even the German website has got plenty of 'silly' errors).

-k-

That link is not working for me. I am using my laptop so possibly I can try on my desktop later. I had no idea they used different sites based on language, probably explains the lack of response in the past. Thanks.

The link works fine on my desktop.

I tried copy and paste into my browser, it takes me to the same English language site I have been using. Probably it will work on my desktop when I get access to it later today.

Meantime does anyone know of a source for these products apart from ordering direct? I know Amos offers some of their products but I prefer the standard pages. Subway has a few listed, also just the hingeless. Just don't like those split back mounts.

Same prices for Austria in the downloaded German price list and the English web-site. Looks to me like either they are both maintained.

The "brilliant" album at $174 Euros vs the std at $79 Euros is a big difference (or 146/66 without VAT).

I bought a set of hingeless pages for Berlin last year from them. The mounts were IMO not sized correctly, too tight in some cases. I had to return them for a refund. Bought a set of standard pages and cut my own mounts. I can use the Showgard type and have them lie flat against the page if I use a one size up, being clear, the extra mount at the top isn't noticeable.

I hate being cynical but perhaps this is why they aren't getting back to you? (Still no reason to not offer good customer service but...)
Don