Haunted Bookshop pricing?
- Thread starter North Pole piper
- Start date
Just catching this now.
When C&D raised prices a little bit in September, they also reviewed pricing structure for various products seriously for the first time in a couple of years. Bulk has always had at least three different pricing levels. For the first time, tins were split into two categories, with a handful of blends going to a higher price.
On some blending components, they went to a significantly higher price in bulk. We've been sourcing amazing perique and latakia lately by working directly with farmers (perique) and processors of latakia (in Cyprus) for the past couple of years, but it's also more expensive to us than it used to be. To our thinking, given the quality difference, it's totally worth it, but it means blending components are now quite expensive.
But, back to Haunted Bookshop:
There really are only two factors that govern the underlying cost: price of tobacco and complexity of manufacturing. It's sort of not obvious that Haunted Bookshop would fall into this category, but it has a lot of cube cut burley which is very time consuming to manufacture as it needs to be pressed into thinnish blocks, then cut, then cut again. So it's like making a flake, but with three times as much work.
C&D doesn't worry about it too much when it's an ounce or two per pound, but HB uses a mess of it and C&D adjusted the price accordingly.
[I'm using the third person above because Matt Johnson, Jeremy Reeves, and Jessica Brady (at LDG) mostly worked out the new pricing, but I was tangentially involved in this decision making and signed off on it.]
Sykes
I suspected it may have been something to do with components but nice to hear it from the source. Thanks for responding to the thread and giving some clarity, much appreciated.
Just taking a quick look at the 2 oz tin pricing for C & D blends on Smokingpipes.com, it appears that only Haunted Bookshop has gone up in price to $12.75 while all others are $11.60. Not enough to turn me off if I enjoyed the blend. I usually wait till they run a sale on C & D bulk and buy HB by the pound.
Haunted Bookshop is one of my favorite blends. I ordered a pound of it yesterday.
I've been thinking about trying this blend, as burvas are my favorite. But how noticeable is the perique in this blend? That may throw me off.
Hardly noticeable at all. More of a subtle, background enhancing flavor than a noticeable standout.
Doesn’t using cost-based pricing seem too simplistic? HB is one of C&D’s most popular blends, therefore they could be charging more for it. Maybe pipe smokers are a very price-sensitive (read: cheap) group.
One could argue that most of the pipe tobacco is such high quality today that all prices should be doubled and it is still a heck of a deal. 15-20 smokes a tin. Each smoke an hour. You can’t beat the price of pipe tobacco. But one gurantee is that the price will only go up and never down.
For me the Perique is not heavy handed but I do notice it and welcome it. The burley is the star of the show with the Virginia lending just a nice bit of sweetness. Delivers a nice dose of N as well.
Indeed, this is what I love about pipe smoking. Unlike cigars, even the finest pipe tobaccos are priced within reach of the common man. And we all respect the smoke from a good cob. There's something very egalitarian about it.
Maybe they don’t wish to rape us? Now that they understand their true cost they can know how much profit margin they need to support their overhead and price it accordingly. So they are good profit-wise and customers don’t become alienated. My 2 cents but this is a labor of love more than a greed driven business from what I see.
Sure as heck beats cigar pricing!!!
I don't of any group of as frugal as pipe smokers unless they as suffering from a bout of PAD/TAD