of developing the technology perhaps Col? I have a mate who imports very popular surf lines such as a well known brand of sunglasses - cost per pair under $20 - sell price $150 plus. Not all the cop goes to the shop by a long way.

Some braids such as varivas cost nearly $200 for 300m. Why cost so much, many reasons, the general rule for PE breaking strains is Pe3 is 30lb, Pe6 60lb Pe8 80lb etc etc. However varivas PE6 breaks at 84lb. Meaning i can get a whole spool (300m) on the stella 10k while if i used tufline 80lb it works out to be about 230m. Also the exspensive braids have more twists. More twists means smoother braid. The production cost of braid is much more than mono hense the more exspense to the consumer.

Deckhand and member of the Gotone Woodvale team

The cost of braid is due to a variety of reasons. The main reason why cheap braid is not comparably priced to cheap nylon is the sourcement of fibres and the manufacturing process.

Nylon is a common material, manufactured in various factories all over the world. Dynema/ (or UHMWPE) is only manufactured in two. The chemical composition is the same as those 2L milk bottles, except milk bottles are a much lower density. Its actually the same as the stuff as petrol or in candles (the chain length of the molecule gets longer). The high density stuff is a lot harder to produce though and needs complex, expensive machinery with high degrees of quality control.

These fibres need to be then braided into a line. This is a very slow process as the fibres need to drawn tight by a mechanical braiding machine. The machines arent all that cheap, but more importantly for mass production, they arent that fast. Theres only so fast you can weave the fibres while keeping them tight. Nylon on the other hand, you just extrude through a die which can be very quick. I forget the actual times, but imagine if a spool of nylon took 1 minute to extrude through a die that cost not too much (you could run several at one time), compared to a spool of braid that would take an 10 minutes to make and it needs an expensive machine. The numbers are just for explanation however.

There are a few types of manufacturing costs. Theres startup costs, material costs, and time costs (i.e. running the plant, electricity, workers pay, overheads, etc). For high volume, the startup doesnt matter much as the cost gets spread over a lot of products. Some items are produced by materials that cost next to nothing, but the time is what you are paying for. For braid, there is material cost, but the time factor is the main one. So even if they are mechanised, if one process is slower, but uses the exact same materials in the same amount, it will be more expensive.

Those are the main reasons for the price disparity between nylon and braid.

As ian said, there is a lot of mark up in products (middlemen on middlemen, especially in australia). There would be some markup for the 'technology', but not because they would need to recoup R&D costs, but because if they can charge for perceived superiority, they will.

As for variation between the brands. You basically pay for brand name, quality assurance and quality control, more threads in a weave (slower and more expensive machinery), tighter weave (slower), coatings, etc.

Edit: Also forgot, the sourced fibres, depsite being produced by the same process can be available in grades (batches or within batches the strength can vary). More expensive braids can be sourced from higher grade fibres, resulting in a thinner braid as D_DOUSH said.

Also, as for it not lasting a lifetime. There are many usability features you pay for. Food and cars dont last a lifetime, and a cheap one will often get the job done fine, but if you get a good one, you're going to get a lot better enjoyment out of it. It might also allow you do do more (consider a fast car on a race track, or a nutritionaly dense, low weight energy bar for hiking) 

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Always interested in someone to go fishing with

can't see how they can justify the cost. I brought a car a few years back for cheaper than you can some brands of braid. And I a sure the technology and development costs for a fair few reels would be higher than that for braid, but they still come in at a lower cost.
(Colin 1 - Co-founding member of the prestigious Colin Club)

You get what you pay for colin, More than happy to pay for quality gear.
Deckhand and member of the Gotone Woodvale team

Either you didnt buy the car new, or inflation came a long way since then :p.

You also might be surprised how cheap it is to produce some things which actually seem complex (like cars and reels). The forming of the fibres isnt cheap due to a limited number of manufacturers and its not an easy process, and the actual process of braiding is quite slow. If a roll takes 1 hour to braid, it would be understandable why it costs so much. Keep in mind though, its not entirely fair to look at the cost of say varivas, than to look at a ferarri and say cars are expensive :p (they bost cost more to manufacture, but theres a lot of brand markup too).

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Always interested in someone to go fishing with

than making a reel.
And as for the car. It was a Valiant Safari waggon - with push button auto. You couldn't get more high tech than that.
D Doush, I am also happy to pay good money for good gear - but I think they may be taking the mickey.
I would love to know what the production cost is for a 100 m of braid.
(Colin 1 - Co-founding member of the prestigious Colin Club)

In some ways it is due to the number of factors you need to control (by comparison, the number of factors to control on a stamping, injection moulding, cold forging machine, etc is lower). Quality assurance can be a problem if the manufacturing process creates dud fibres (waste, plus you have to do lots of tests and QA)

A reel has many more parts, but each part is produced en mass in a very quick time. A injection moulding machine may be able to create 100 parts a minute (8 per mould, 5 second cycle). Cold forging you could do 30 per minute no problem. The machines are very common. They arent cheap (you can change dies for different parts though), and tooling costs for moulds is not cheap. However, due to the speed of manufacturing, the time cost per part is relatively low. Material cost is not exorbitantly high either. The upfront costs of machinery can be amortized over many reels. Say for 1 million cost for tooling, setup and R&D on a reel, if you produce 100,000 reels, thats only $10/reel. Each reel doesnt have a lot of time spent on it.

Producing braid on the other hand, is a slow process. Say you have a factory producing 1000 reels/hour and a another producing 10,000m/hour of braid. The running costs for the reels is higher. Say factory running costs are $10,000/hr for the reels and $2,000/hr for the braid. Thats $10/reel, but $0.2/m for braid. But on a 300m reel, thats $60. Numbers are just for example.

It doesnt matter if its high tech. High tech can often lead to faster manufacturing times and hence a cheaper product overall (which is why they they expensive welding, painting and caulking robots in cars). R&D costs are high for cars, but they make a lot of them.

A handmade wooden table is not high tech, but will cost a lot more than a table from ikea made with fancy high tech machinery, as well as have a lot of design work gone into it.

There is some degree of being charged more because people will pay for it, but braid still costs several times more than nylon lines to manufacture.

What year was the car col?

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Always interested in someone to go fishing with

i'll take it off your hands

i use fins braid and buy off the net save about 70 percent

I know that reels have bugger all mark up on them from stores. Not sure on braid. I think you will find that the wholesaler is the one making the money! Like most places that buy from wholesalers they are more expensive than places that import direct. I know that i import my live stock and i can sell it a lot cheaper than other stores who have to buy from importers.
You can pick up the same brands on ebay and other sites on the net and save upwards of 50%.
At the end of the day the more popular it is and the more it is in demand the higher the price will be. I think the best think to do is shop around. I agree you get what you pay for.

Fishing isn't a matter of life or death, it's much more serious than that!!!

I personally would rather pay the extra 20$ for an australian braid such as bionic than a chinese brand for the same quality, kinda like shopping local.  

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You couln't wipe that grin fom my face even with a hammer.

Unfortunately it is long gone. I bought it for $200, drove it all over the place for five years and sold it to a scrap dealer when the transmission finally gave out for $250.
That old slant 6 engine could really push out some power and the solid metal body made them like a low flying missile. No power steering made turning hard work though.
I wish I still had it.
(Colin 1 - Co-founding member of the prestigious Colin Club)

it would be nice to have even minus gearbox - i had a mate who sold a Phase 3 Shaker for $500 in the early 80's and was bloody pleased to get that much.

Apples for apples Colin

You're comparing a new braid of an expensive brand in 2008 with a lower priced car you bought second hand that was made in 1964 :p (not sure when you bought it).

CPI inflation would place the valiant at around $19,000 new today, comparable to the cost of say a new lancer (with vastly more technology for the same equiv price ;) ). That would make varivas braid (the 'ferarri' equiv) around $28 at that time, but a reasonable priced braid would be around $8.

$200 would be around $1400 in todays dollars, which you could get a second hand car for. (it would actually be more as the $200 wouldnt be in 1965 dollars if the car was secondhand, especially as there were no dollars in 1965, hehe)

Apples for apples, the price comparison would be the same as paying $1400 for a roll of matrix pro

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Always interested in someone to go fishing with

And you can't have fun in the back seat with braid - no matter what brand it is.
(Colin 1 - Co-founding member of the prestigious Colin Club)

Got 1200 metres of 50lb dynema braid for $41 and 600 of 80lb
dynema braid for $23 off ebay,even if it only lasts 12-18 months I'm still miles in front than by heading off to the local stores and buying known brands.
Both line have given no hassles and are more than comparable with the "good" stuff I have on other reels that cost as much as 4 times the cost

I have no idea what Hlokk is on about? Man I wish I could've listened that much in school.

Big markup, on certain ones. Then there are others with less than 50% markup.

Ha where you work dean anaconda or bcf??? Im sure my boss would be happy to find braid with that much markup!!!! Ive got braid here that would have less than 20% mark up!
Deckhand and member of the Gotone Woodvale team

Edited

Well either we are getting ripped off by our suppliers or you guys are ripping ya customers!!! Why carnt you say dean???? im proud of where i work.

Deckhand and member of the Gotone Woodvale team

Fishermen catch fish,tackle catches fishernen

Nup just looked at my 3 most popular braids and they cost no way near that!

Deckhand and member of the Gotone Woodvale team

Pride has nothing to do with it, and I don't give a crap if I work in a chain store.

It's because I am not supposed to be quoting figures, and would probably get in trouble for it.

I bet you have ones of the braids I am talking about.

Hi Ya,

I am hoping that someone could explain to me why braid costs so much?

Colin #1, just three words - "Because they can".

Cheers.


RECFISHWEST member

Don't want to put a spanner in the works, but prices are generally set according to supply and demand....

The cost factor Hlokk is talking about is taken into consideration when deciding whether or not to go ahead with a project/production... at the budgeting/planning stage.

I think a clear example of what I mean by supply and demand setting prices is real estate - consider real estate prices 10yrs ago... and then consider it now... what has changed? Ok building costs have increased in the last 10yrs but that doesn't explain the enormous price increases... fundamental value in real estate is the land - and supply and demand pressures have caused land values to go through the roof.

When supply is reduced prices go up... when demand is increased prices go up (and vice versa) - simple as that.

cheers,
damo