Just a note out there to anyone looking for some used St Croix Premiere rods… I know of a few 7 foot med heavy and meduim rods that are for sale as well as one 6 1/2 med. I think the asking price is 60 bucks. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll pm you the specifics.
jc
Are those your rods? if so are there any partner discounts? 
60 bucks!!!! I can get those rods cheaper brand new. I could probably buy a new avid for that price.
Don
Please let the rest of us know where a guy can lay hands on $60 Avids… I’m dying to know your source!
Include me in the list of people looking for that good of a deal. I know what I paid more than 100 bucks for each of them. Tell you what, I’ll give you 60 bucks for every new Avid you can get your hands on!!!! By the way, Starks in Prarie doesn’t sell them at a huge discount any more.
jc
Yeah…. retailers that got caught discounting the MSRP lost the product line altogether or priced them where the manufacturer “suggested.”
If you paid $100 for a premier, you got screwed hardcore. There is only a couple of premiers that I can think of that cost over $100 one being the 7’MH. Also I just bought a new St. croix avid 7’MH for $65 after tax and stuff.
Don
Again, not to be too much of a pest, but where? As far as I know, Avids are $150 rods and any retailer that sells them for less is one phone call away from losing their st. croix line of rods.
I’m not talking factory seconds or custom builds here. If you can get NEW Avids for $60, I want to know about it ‘cuz I work hard for my money like everyone else and would just as soon not spend any more for them than I have to.
Don were you going to share where it is you are getting them?
The Rod you are quoting is $165.00 retail.
This is the current retail price..
St. Croix Avid Rods.
jc
I just checked the St. Croix website and find that a full 33% of all Premiere models sell for $100 or more. That includes all the itty-bitty walleye stuff, etc. too so those numbers don’t really reflect the cost of a rod typically used by the bass guys.
Just think of all the money we’re all gonna’ save once Don shares his secret with us… 
BulletBassBoats,
Welcome to the board! You’ve got us stirred up pretty good! Any chance you’d share this information privately……………to protect the innocent? Maybe in this private message, you don’t even have to reveal the source, but would you be willing to transfer them?
“Stirred up…?” Heck, this is more exciting than double coupon days at the dollar store! Woo Hoo!
Ain’t I a stinker?
count me in on the 60 avids- the cheapest I have found is 150 for any avid, and I “need” a ac66mhf or one close to that. How much can you get elites for? PM me with the location, my lips are sealed once I lay my hands on this deal.
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“Stirred up…?” Heck, this is more exciting than double coupon days at the dollar store! Woo Hoo!
Ain’t I a stinker?
Yes sir…………….you make a good tur………tsie roll. 
I see you’re the first guy to find the new graemlin. I like him. I think I’ll pare down some of the others that are either boring or rarely used and see if we can’t get some better one. I mean, who uses this guy? 
Looks like the top-down view of a yellow bowling ball.
Hey, thats the top of my going bald head you are looking at! Getting back to St. Croix rods. I’ve got my credit card in one hand and my car keys in the other. Just point me in the right direction. Best rods around! Thanks, Bill
[ps this new smilly face is cute too. 
]
Find him? I think I was mid-post when you stuck him on my plate!!! It kinda reminded me of a “stinker” up a tree that thought it’d be cute to drop a little acorn on my noggin’!
Bill……………..you need any help with that “shopping”? 
I’m always game for looking over some quality equipment!
Sure do Kid. Need someone to help carry all those rods. Thanks, Bill
I believe it’s illegal for a manufacturer to demand that a retailer sell their product at any given or minimum price. It’s that whole antitrust thing. St. Croix Rod’s attorneys better come off the lake and check this out. 
Maybe, but I am sure they can suggest it… I do believe they can dictate the resellers without much problem.
jc
It is illegal for a company to set a price for a product. It’s called price fixing. It goes on more than we think. You ever see a product that never goes on sale and most places have it for the same price? I’ll give you one example. Oakley sunglasses. I worked for a place that sold them and I can tell you if you ever see them on sale, Oakley did not authorize it. When we got their product in stock, we were told what the bottom line was and we could charge anything over that. Bottom line wasn’t cost either. The sad part is, people buy their sunglasses without questioning the price. If their sales dropped off for a significant amount of time you might see their prices lower or maybe a “Factory Authorized” sale. But the demand is constant and Oakley can dictate ‘policy.’ I’m sure to some extent St. Croix has the same marketing strategy. They have a great product and a constant demand.
I think they are correct in that a manufacturer/wholesaler cannot dictate the final price, but they essentially do just that via various methods.
A few years ago, I was looking into a HD big twin. They have about the best method of dictating price (legally). Each dealership has a set # of bikes they get from the factory each year (thus dictating the profitability of the individual dealership).
Sell to someone outside your zone? That’s one less bike for you next year. Sell at a cut-rate? One less bike for you next year.
This is all of course just what the HD dealer told me (not Metro, but one in MN that refused to even talk about selling me a bike due to my residence being >70 miles away).
As some of you are aware, I’m a St. Croix nut also. If you can get new Avids for $60.00, please share. That is what I paid for them when I was working at Gander, but only three a year. How can they expect a guy to only buy 3 rods a year….
I don’t know anything about price dictating and it’s laws but I have to believe St.Croix is doing what they’re doing because their lawyers have already laid the groundwork for them to do this.
On the flip side, I have to wonder what communist is running these companies? Why would you limit free enterprise? Have you ever heard of a KFC cutting back on one of it’s restaurants because it outperformed a nearby “competitor”? That’s plane lunacy! St. Croix, Oakley, HD………….and any other company out there should look to reward those who move that product for them! A factory cost is a factory cost……….what they do after that should be left to the individual business owner.
The only thing that crosses my mind is that it’s possible to buy retail, direct from St. Croix, isn’t it? To get full retail, factory direct, is a business man’s dream and to protect this, imposing mandatory pricing could be the option. Meanwhile, I believe it chokes the possibilities of a much larger picture.
I almost wonder……………when they’ll go strictly internet for sales? 20………50 years? Less? No more wondering who’s selling what for how much and all you need is word of mouth reps, like all of us who rant about how awesome the product is, to keep your sales up. The only thing stopping them from doing it today is the continuing low level (but growing none the less!) of e-commerce activity. Once the market process is common practice………there’s nothing preventing this change.
I have no idea if Croix has an “open” fixed price policy but I can tell you what I’ve been told as to why it is done.
This greatly condensed from a discussion with a friend I have who happens to be an upper-level croix rep…
If prices were not “fixed,” you would not be able to buy a croix from a smaller bait shop in a short amount of time. Large purchases made by huge retailers like Cabelas or Gander are done in large volumes and receive discounts for these volume purchases. These retailers would quickly pass these margins through to the retail price and under cut smaller shops driving them out of the rod business. With the smaller shops out of the way, the small number of large retailers still purchasing from St. Croix wield an incredible amount of power over the manufacturer regarding price points, quality and products. Instead of producing $150 high quality rods sold in store at a 100% margin from wholesale to retail you end up with a $55 rod sold at 300% margins from wholesale to retail, likely now made over seas, with an extreme reduction in quality.
why would a retailer want to do this? They take advantage of the Croix reputation and sell a higher volume of rods to a larger audience of people who are interested in the less expensive rods at an inflated margin. Less per sale but alot more sales.
Who is Croix protecting? Their product lines and the consumers who want high end rods.
Me I like some of these price “fixing” stategies. Afterall,I make the desicion to buy the product or not and at the price established. If it’s too high, I don’t buy. Croix’s objective is to make the best possible rod and offer it at the most attractive price. What is a retailer’s objective? To sell as many units as possible at the highest possible margins. I don’t want retailers weilding any influence on my manufacturer of choice for high end fishing rods. I want the best stick possible. If I want cheap and made over seas, I’ll buy berkley. Lots of decent $50 rods to be had that are usable but pale in comparison to a high-end rod.
My 2 cents and some food for thought.
Who ever heard of such a thing? Me. Take your fast foods example for example… the price of a Big Mac is the same at all the Mc Donalds I visit. Coincidence? I think not. Mc Donalds Corporate would NOT want compeition between its store based on pricing. Think of how rediculous this would be to have stores cutting costs, sacrificing services and quality to lower prices to basically compete against itself. Don’t like the price of a Big Mac? Go to Hardees. Or get a Whopper at Burger King. To me, when comsumers have alternatives, pricing guidelines like these are a good thing. When is it bad? When I have no choices. When I must buy the goods or services to survive. Do I care that a Bentley has a $225K price tag and it’s etched in stone? Not hardly. And the rich guys that buy them don’t either. But if we’re talking utilities, food or fuel (a few examples among many), distributed and controlled by a single moster-sized company that has eliminated it’s competition and has me over a barrel knowing I must buy their product at any cost, well, that’s real bad.
Generally speaking, when you’re talking low volume, high end products, these pricing guidelines likely work in the consumer’s favor. When we’re talking high volume goods that everyone MUST buy, they’re bad.
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I don’t know anything about price dictating and it’s laws but I have to believe St.Croix is doing what they’re doing because their lawyers have already laid the groundwork for them to do this.
On the flip side, I have to wonder what communist is running these companies? Why would you limit free enterprise? Have you ever heard of a KFC cutting back on one of it’s restaurants because it outperformed a nearby “competitor”? That’s plane lunacy! St. Croix, Oakley, HD………….and any other company out there should look to reward those who move that product for them! A factory cost is a factory cost……….what they do after that should be left to the individual business owner.
The only thing that crosses my mind is that it’s possible to buy retail, direct from St. Croix, isn’t it? To get full retail, factory direct, is a business man’s dream and to protect this, imposing mandatory pricing could be the option. Meanwhile, I believe it chokes the possibilities of a much larger picture.
I almost wonder……………when they’ll go strictly internet for sales? 20………50 years? Less? No more wondering who’s selling what for how much and all you need is word of mouth reps, like all of us who rant about how awesome the product is, to keep your sales up. The only thing stopping them from doing it today is the continuing low level (but growing none the less!) of e-commerce activity. Once the market process is common practice………there’s nothing preventing this change.
Plain and simple answer is that is you start selling harley davidson motorcycles for 5k then the aparent value is that they are not worth much. If St Croix changes there pricing structures more resellers will have to drop pricing making it harder for smaller businesses to compete. Next if the reseller is making more money on Loomis rods he will more than likely push those rods in stead.. I think St Croix is doing the right thing.
jc
I think James is missing some of my point.
Back to the Big Mac………………yes, they’re pretty much the same price everywhere you go but if you look at the revenues of two restuarants within a mile of each other, their results can be vastly different. So does that mean the one with the higher sales should start limiting their sales because the Corporate franchise wants to even the playing field and penalizes the better business with fewer patties next month? I brought up this comparison for the mentioning of what Harley Davidson is doing. It doesn’t apply as well to the St. Croix issue.
I had this whole bigger thing written up but took the time to realize what James and Jeremy were saying. I can see those points, made by the Croix rep. Eventually rendering yourself to the vulnerability of low competition and retailer leverage is a scary thought. It works by today’s standards……………but I often get stuck in thinking about tomorrow’s world in relation to what’s going on today, and think that what’s going on today is really………………..broken.
Think about this……….when e-commerce becomes common place………and don’t think it isn’t happening…………are you going to need “Amazon” to sell your product? NO. Guys, I’m already so used to the Information Age transformation that I forget Industrial Age practices are still in place. The future is a level playing field. The guy in his living room has the same ability a Cabela’s does. The only way to change this is to join that fella’s game…………..your own site, your own product, with your own marketing incentives, and no middle man between “the store” and the consumer. Only a delivery guy, that YOU will pay for. Who’s got the leverage then? Fixed price your brains out!
In the meantime, price fixing isn’t working according to my observations. Ebay is loaded with “little guys” that can’t compete with the big guys anyway and have to sell out for whatever they can get. It might work in people getting the same deal in a local shop but the profitability factor is in the volume and again, the little guy comes up short. Convenience, selection, availability…………the big guys are big guys because of bigger risks and bigger visions. Somebody somewhere in some place and time has to start from scratch. The magic isn’t in the business, but in the mind of the business owner. That applies to St. Croix as much as it does it’s merchants. I wouldn’t worry about retailer leverage unless I planned to one day be dependent on it. Apparently………..they either believe they are or that they will be someday.
I don’t think it’s wise to pollute this board with a discussion of economic principles and practices. It’s a good way to end friendly relationships.
What I would say is that if St Croix thinks they’ve priced their rods competatively, then they should go with it. If they were closer to cost, they would likely have at least one more customer (me).
Sorry, it has come to my attention that the last post wasn’t clear… When I said, “pollute,” I was referring to me going into a diatribe on competing economic theories, which would have eventually led me to an argument, which would eventually lead to a flame-war, which etc etc etc.
Didn’t mean to step on any toes.
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