New Sailor Progear Realo (Kingdomnote)

[mke]

KingdomNote just published a new Sailor Realo, called "Smell".

Good or bad smell - up to you.

(Should better translate it with "Fragrance" )

 

LINK

 

Nib: 21k - EF, F, MF, M, B, Z (strange, but B and Z can not be chosen on their order page??)

 

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by mke

[eciton]

Looks very pretty! If I hadn't just secured one of the new Bungubox Fujiyama Pro Gears, I would be tempted to investigate whether they'd ship to the UK...

[gyasko]

Scent would be a better translation unless you wanted to be funny.

[Theroc]

The ProGear Realo is my favorite Sailor. It's great to see it in more finishes. I recently treated myself to the Champagne Realo from Wancher, unfortunately it's not a ProGear.

[mke]

This "smell" translation is an (old) running joke among foreigners in Japan - sorry.

 

I am not sure which one is better "fragrance" or "scent", need to check some correct sentences with the Japanese "Kaoru/薫".

At least, Kaoru should be considered a pleasant "smell".

However, the Sailor inks have a distinctive "smell" which many people do not find pleasant - so it is a bad "smell".

 

And so we are back to the dilemma of "good or bad smell". QED.

Edited May 25, 2020 by mke

[whichwatch]

The ProGear Realo is my favorite Sailor. It's great to see it in more finishes. I recently treated myself to the Champagne Realo from Wancher, unfortunately it's not a ProGear.

 

LOL - I have a Wancher Champagne Pro Gear but it's not a Realo!

[Honeybadgers]

I clicked on the "product page" and saw the price as 2200 yen. Was really confused for a half second then I realized it was for the ink.

 

$410.

 

It's beautiful (apart from the nib scrollwork, which looks cheap), I adore the color, but perfectly in line with Sailor's awful pricing. I don't see any reason why pen makers think they can charge roughly $150 more for the "difficulty" of throwing a different color of plastic pellets into the hopper. That box cost maybe $5 and the bottle maybe $5.

[mke]

It is not the difficulty of using differently colored starting materials, it most probably the processing cost of the machines running for a few pens (including setup, cleaning and other necessary works). If you calculate such costs for a batch of 10000, the cost per pen is much less.

 

And, of course, Sailor takes what they can get, the shop too. But I wouldn't be surprised if Sailor wouldn't also enforce a MRSP.

[Lloyd]

I clicked on the "product page" and saw the price as 2200 yen. Was really confused for a half second then I realized it was for the ink.

 

$410.

 

It's beautiful (apart from the nib scrollwork, which looks cheap), I adore the color, but perfectly in line with Sailor's awful pricing. I don't see any reason why pen makers think they can charge roughly $150 more for the "difficulty" of throwing a different color of plastic pellets into the hopper. That box cost maybe $5 and the bottle maybe $5.

I've always wondered that and why rhodium trim always costs so much more than gold trim.

[mke]

Rhodium is more expensive than gold.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51171391

[Lloyd]

Rhodium is more expensive than gold.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51171391

Not enough to justify the price differentials.

[mke]

> Not enough to justify the price differentials.

Since when is a price of any product "justified"? Do we know a product's price calculations, cost?

 

> I've always wondered that and why rhodium trim always costs so much more than gold trim.

Always? Sailor has e.g. the same MRSP for rhodium and for gold-plated pens. You are referring to which pens?

 

https://www.sailor.co.jp/lineup/progear

https://www.sailor.co.jp/lineup/profit

[Honeybadgers]

It is not the difficulty of using differently colored starting materials, it most probably the processing cost of the machines running for a few pens (including setup, cleaning and other necessary works). If you calculate such costs for a batch of 10000, the cost per pen is much less.

 

And, of course, Sailor takes what they can get, the shop too. But I wouldn't be surprised if Sailor wouldn't also enforce a MRSP.

 

It doesn't cost that much to run them through on the cleaning and setup is likely nonexistent apart from plugging a different program into the laser engraver for the nib. These aren't gigantic automotive multistep processes, ABS and polycarbonate are pretty easy things to small-scale manufacture on a single die set.

 

Sailor has a pretty nasty recent history of jacking prices without adding value because they know they can. Pilot managed to knock 30% off of iroshizuku prices and kept the great bottles. Sailor switched the bungubox to their garbage bottles and kept hiking the price, even on their own inks in those trash bottles. Seriously, they put ink in bottles that you can't even fill their own pens from

Edited May 28, 2020 by Honeybadgers

[mke]

> knock 30% off of iroshizuku prices

Really? Where?

 

The only thing they do, is to let discounters sell their bottles.

[mke]

We do not have any information about the prices, Sailor charges to shops for a run of 50 or 100, nor do we know if they enforce a MRSP or not.

 

But we speculate that Sailor has increased the prices. A price increase for the end user could also be an increase by the shop, isn't it so?

 

IIRC, I didn't see an increase of the price of the pens in their shop.

 

Where are the facts for this price increase?

Apart from changing from 8 to 10% consumption tax last year.

Edited May 28, 2020 by mke

[mke]

Since 2015, no price increase for the KoP standard and the 1911L - in Japan 60000/20000 Yen plus tax.

I just checked my database.

Edited May 28, 2020 by mke

[XYZZY]

> knock 30% off of iroshizuku prices

Really? Where?

 

The only thing they do, is to let discounters sell their bottles.

 

That was a few years back. If I remember the story correctly, the IRO bottles used to be hand-blown, then Pilot found somebody who could make them by machine for much less. Instead of pocketing the difference Pilot passed that savings to us.

[mke]

> Pilot passed that savings to us.

 

Rare and nice.

Also nice is that they allow discounters to sell them - at the moment, the cheapest price in Japan is about 1100 Yen instead of 1500 (officially) - so about 25% off.

I also have the impression that they don't take the hands/legs of resellers abroad - don't have exact data, however .

[A Smug Dill]

That pen is gorgeous; but alas, even if I can overlook the disadvantage of it being a piston-filler, with Rakuten Global Market closing down (and Kingdom Note not having sold on RGM for a long time anyway), ordering directly from Kingdom Note in Japan to ship to Australia is too much of a pain.

 

As for the objections to pricing, let's face it: for hobbyists like us, buying and writing with fountain pens (as opposed to using any other sort of pen) to suit our sensibilities is completely discretionary to begin with, and we could always choose to buy the same model of pen in plain black for the 'basic' price. If we want to buy 'prettier' pens because they would give us more personal satisfaction, then that's reason enough for manufacturers and retailers to expect to make more profit off us with those pens in a fair exchange. Having a number of imperfect compromises (with all terms and conditions considered) is still having a choice, and having a choice is always better than not having a choice (even if one is predisposed to agonise over choices), regardless of whether neither choice leaves us better off than if the alternative is chosen

[Mech-for-i]

As usual the English name they've chosen hardly represent what the actual wording means ... I always had a laugt with that