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Editorial

Any chance of a bit less?

 The future used to be so much better, quipped one of Bavaria’s most beloved comedians, Karl Valentin. A feeling I’m sure we can all sympathise with. What has certainly got a lot harder these days is putting a price on your own services – the creative industry ­suffers particularly in this regard. Will it be cheaper if I do the photos for the brochure myself? Perhaps less text? Or just black-and-white illustrations? Ten percent off for loyalty, or three percent for early payment, that would be …
Whatever happened to the concept of value? Just about everyone seems to be offering discounts. Nobody buys anything any more for the regular price and the idea of paying a fair price never gets a look-in in this bargain-basement climate.
The very idea of questioning the prices offered by a service provider is odd, I feel. Because you are also question­ing the value of the service being provided. So what kind of cooperation is it when you suspect your business partner of trying to get one over on you in his ­quote? If you then decide that you can’t afford the price quoted – something we are all at liberty to do – then you can hardly blame him for that fact.
You just have to cast a glance at the adverts currently being put out by various furniture companies, to see just what kind of downward spiral results if you fixate purely on price. Looking at these ads, you could almost believe they are giving the stuff away – summer/autumn/­winter/spring sales, or special offers for Halloween and Christmas seem to make up the entire sales strategy of the industry. This brings down the image of the supplier to the level of bucket shop. Worse still, with each new and »amazing« offer, the customers gradually wises up to the ploy and starts to feel he is being made a fool of.
A model example of the very opposite tactic is Apple: no discounts, same prices everywhere. Either you want one, or you walk away. If you can only afford a bicycle, then you won’t be driving away in a Porsche. So, if you can’t pay a designer the going rate, then you’ll have to ask a favour of Auntie Hiltrude, who recently did an evening class in creative drawing. There’s one hidden, but nevertheless important, benefit to taking this simple, no-nonsense approach – you save yourself hours and hours of time that would otherwise have been wasted researching and comparing prices.
Another example shows that such resolution really does pay: I will be buying a new kitchen this year and in my research I came across a studio that set out ten basic principles on its website. One of them was: »We never give discounts to our customers, even if they then don’t buy from us«. That I will certainly take a look at. With them I’ll save myself so much time on negotiations …

Bettina Schulz

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