This seems… unreasonable to me. What am I missing in respect of the cost here? It would appear to be a piece of injection-moulded plastic with some magnets and slide switches.
Austalian Dollars - so at current exchange it’s about the same price (excluding taxes). The point still stands though - unless I’m missing something, I can’t imagine the production costs of these are more than USD$5-10 each, plus margin for development etc and profit, USD$49 still seems ridiculously high. Or am I missing something?
I am guessing there is the start up costs in there also.
One starts with:
- Start up costs, design, molds, a portion of the fixed overhead costs (need a building to make them in, support staff) etc.
- Cost per unit
- Number of units to sell to reach break even.
My guess is once they reach the point where they have sold a break even quantity of units, they can then reduce the price a bit.
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For comparison, that is:
- 2x wifi cards
- More than a fan+heatsink combo
- More than a fingerprint reader
- 2x webcam modules
Certainly is interesting considering how complex those things are vs how simple I think the bezel is.
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That’s a TON of money for a piece of plastic. I hope they aren’t taking advantage of people who accidentally broke theirs or want a different color.
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Custom plastic molds cost a lot of money. Could just be that combined with low, overall volume. It could also be a situation where the size, composition, and required tolerances of the parts results in poor yields, resulting in a lot of loss. I know they had to stop making the clear bezel all together because of the very poor yields.
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Thanks, that makes sense, but I imagine those sunk costs must have been ameliorated by now, given how many of these units they have shipped. I’d be interested to see the actual numbers on this if Framework would be willing to share.
Whilst I get that there is a fairness aspect to charging people less than others have been charged in the past, it does preclude these types of conversations.
I was just very surprised - during the purchase process the coloured bezel options were $15 each, when I went to choose another one (because I can be fickle like that) it was 5x that. Whilst I get that part of the cost of the bezel is included in the laptop itself, just seemed like a very large delta for again, what is at the end of the day a piece of plastic with some magnets.
I think most of those parts are commodity bits so they are made in their millions so the unit costs would be very low.
But the fan/heatsink combo would be custom made for Framework so there is a parallel here, I imagine the copper itself would be worth more than the entire materials bill for the bezel. That does seem very weird.
The colored bezel options at order time were likely an additional $15 each, on top of the baseline cost of the standard bezel, not $15 total.
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Yes, and they are an additional AUD$15 in the Marketplace. Obviously this reflects the additional costs of pigments, plus development costs etc, and the smaller production runs for reduced demand. I don’t have an issue with them charging a premium for the smaller-run units, but even AUD$60 for the black bezel seems, in my uneducated opinion, very expensive for what it seems to be.
That’s why I phrased the original question the way I did, this could be an entirely reasonable price once all the costs and margin are factored in. But it seems to me that it is just a well-engineered piece of plastic that would have almost negligible input costs so what am I missing here?
It could be that given Frameworks ethos of sustainability, they are actively discouraging people from buying lots of bezels and increasing the amount of e-waste in the world. It could be that the amount of time and energy required to develop the bezel is significantly larger than I, as someone who has never designed a product like this, can fathom. But as pointed out by Tom1 above, the heatsink/fan unit is the same price as a replacement black bezel and AUD$15 cheaper than the coloured ones. That just doesn’t seem to make sense to me, and I’m hoping that someone can make it make sense.
[Environmental] Penalty to the wallet for breaking a plastic piece. For example, we don’t know if Framework has a bucket / piggy bank for Framework | Carbon Capture for x number of units sold, on our behalf.
(The mold also has some kind of lifetime before the edges start to go blurry / not as sharp. That’s my extremely limited understanding.)
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Again, all we can do is speculate, until/unless someone from Framework chimes in. But I think the below is entirely plausible.
First, custom molds do cost a lot to develop and make. So that is a very high, upfront cost. Sure, it will be ameliorated over time, but the molds also wear out over time and will need to be replaced eventually. And this replacement will have to happen sooner, depending on how detailed the mold is and how precise the tolerances on the final part have to be.
Second, yields might be a huge factor. Again, the numbers here are purely speculative, but let’s compare to the heatsink/fan. The fan is likely an “off-the-shelf” part and the heatsink is probably not as expensive for a company like Cooler Master to tool up to make with a slightly different length heat-pipe with a custom bend than it is to create and entirely custom plastic mold. And once they are cranking them out, it’s likely they have a higher usable yield. Again, speculative, but imagine 99% of the heatsink/fan units that roll off the line are useable. The ones that aren’t to spec are copper, which is quite easily recycled, so there is some returned cost from the unusable part. The fan and motor are separate parts that are simply not installed onto the heatsink unless it comes out right. What if the bezel only has an 80% yield? Maybe 20% break, the color is uneven, the details didn’t fill out properly, or they are out of dimensional tolerance once cooled. These “bad” ones go straight in the bin, with no reusable materials. This is a continued loss/cost, not something that gets absorbed over time through volume. And if they have to factor in the cost of an entirely new mold at some point when the current mold wears out, that could all add up to a seemingly too expensive part.
Again, this is speculative. Though I do remember them talking about struggling to get the yields acceptable on the bezel, and the clear option was dropped entirely because the yields were too bad to justify continuing to make it. Either way, I don’t see it as implausible that there is a totally real and reasonable reason why the bezel is so expensive.
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Thanks BigT, that makes a lot of sense. As I said, I’ve no experience in this area, but all my previous understanding is “plastic is cheap” just didn’t jibe with this cost. A can of spray paint will resolve this issue for about AUS$5 anyway, I just would have preferred to not have to go that route in case I ever wanted to go back to the original one I ordered.
Thanks for your (and everyone’s) insight, greatly appreciated.
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