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New business location in LA. Renderings start from $199


zoeyzhao1
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Hey Zoey - welcome to LA!

 

You did say "starting at $199" but can you please give the prices for these:

 

A = $

B = $

c = $

 

Thanks!

 

199 A.jpg

 

199 B.jpg

 

199 C.jpg

 

My guesses would be (A - $1200) (B - $800) (C - $700) but if they're all $199 I will definitely be sending you a PM.

 

p.s. - you have stiff competition - someone is doing them for $5.

Edited by heni30
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We've posts that have covered this before - where we in the "west" have vented moral outrage at the stupid foreigners devaluing viz work with probably pirated software. Yet we still haven't walked a step in their shoes...

 

Stupid idiots...........? I mean c'mon, we can do better comments than that.

 

I'm sure that Bangalore or Bangladesh would welcome us to go and live and work from there, then when we can live in a those conditions we too can cut our costs down to similar levels and bingo, it's a level playing field again. Easy.

 

But while we sit in comparative luxury pontificating - I would bet my left nut that within our field of vision right now there is more sh_t sourced from a sweatshop than from ethically home produced by a unionised - work/life balanced all local workforce using all local raw materials. We can't have it both ways.

 

We've just got to sell different set of advantages than them to clients rather than necessarily just try and compete on price and confected moral outrage.

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OK - As an example - I went into a large bank in Nigeria to change money, in order to have at least one legitimate (non-blackmarket) currency transaction on my Currency Dec form, to show for my few weeks driving through their country.

 

But the bank teller kept insisting on doing a blackmarket change so I asked to see the Bank Manager instead. However the bank manager also insisted on doing a black market transaction too.

 

It was very very difficult to eventually achieve a legit transaction. They all thought I was mad. No actually - they all thought I was a stupid idiot!

 

So you go and try and buy a legit Vray or Max in Lagos or Dhaka .... I bet it's not as easy as you think!

 

By the way back to Nigeria - I later purchased over 500 litres of fuel for two 4x4's for a grand total of $12 USD.

 

And you want us to compete with the second or third world on price?

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but he lives in the USA

 

OK - As an example - I went into a large bank in Nigeria to change money, in order to have at least one legitimate (non-blackmarket) currency transaction on my Currency Dec form, to show for my few weeks driving through their country.

 

But the bank teller kept insisting on doing a blackmarket change so I asked to see the Bank Manager instead. However the bank manager also insisted on doing a black market transaction too.

 

It was very very difficult to eventually achieve a legit transaction. They all thought I was mad. No actually - they all thought I was a stupid idiot!

 

So you go and try and buy a legit Vray or Max in Lagos or Dhaka .... I bet it's not as easy as you think!

 

By the way back to Nigeria - I later purchased over 500 litres of fuel for two 4x4's for a grand total of $12 USD.

 

And you want us to compete with the second or third world on price?

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Stupid idiots...........? I mean c'mon, we can do better comments than that.

 

...

 

We've just got to sell different set of advantages than them to clients rather than necessarily just try and compete on price and confected moral outrage.

 

Sorry, I got carried away. It was probably over the line. BUT:

I only said stupid idiot because they are operating in the same market as us, and thereby they can per definition use somewhat the same pricing as we do. They can charge a lot more, AND keep the value of the business. Win-win situation, you said? Yea.

 

IMO, all your arguments fails because of the fact that they are operating in the same market.

Edited by chroma
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Thats how you argument calling your oversees colleagues a stupid idiots? :D

 

I only said stupid idiot because they are operating in the same market as us, and thereby they can per definition use somewhat the same pricing as we do. They can charge a lot more, AND keep the value of the business. Win-win situation, you said? Yea.

 

All your arguments fails because of the fact that they are operating in the same market.

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IMO, all your arguments fails because of the fact that they are operating in the same market.

 

This the 21st century globalised world, we're all operating in everyone's marketplace.

 

In this instance it would seem there are a few people in an office in the US funneling work to people in Beijing to pump out the work at possibly lower cost than those normal in the US. (The corollary applies to Norway or Australia in the West with Bangladesh or Bangalore in the developing world.)

 

How is that different to buying your Iphone from the Apple store in your main street or your Dell computer or any one of the million cheap products we rely on - produced from the sweat of cheaper markets than ours.

 

You are always welcome to try and get projects in their backyard - Beijing, but I just suggest you probably don't try and compete on cost, that one you might lose.

 

So instead I suggest that we should find alternative strengths to sell in order to compete: Like proximity or just being too damn good, but we shouldn't complain when we're undercut on price from countries that don't reek privilege like our do.

 

Of course if you want to cut your margin you could use pirate software too, the choice is yours and it is certainly not our place to moralise about people living very different lives to ours. We do what we think is right and let them do what they need to do to put food on their families table.

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This the 21st century globalised world, we're all operating in everyone's marketplace. ...

 

 

I agree that 21st century is a globalised world. :)

 

 

 

So instead I suggest that we should find alternative strengths to sell in order to compete: Like proximity or just being too damn good, but we shouldn't complain when we're undercut on price from countries that don't reek privilege like our do.

 

Of course if you want to cut your margin you could use pirate software too, the choice is yours and it is certainly not our place to moralise about people living very different lives to ours. We do what we think is right and let them do what they need to do to put food on their families table.

 

 

I agree that we should improve ourselves to be competitive. That is a must, and it is healthy for the business with fair competition. I don't think our privileges, though, is something to bring up, because if we are in a globalized world and in the same markets, this should not be a factor to use to argument away massive underbidding. In other aspects, of course. But when it comes to this actual topic, my opinion stands. Of course we have privileges, but we also have massive living costs.

 

Everybody is looking for a way to bring food to the table, but really - they can go a lot higher in their pricing and still get projects in "our markets". They don't need to underbid that much on their quotes as they do, again that only destroys the value of what we all do. I mean, $199 for a hi-quality illustration, that indicates so much where this is heading. It would be interesting to get some comments on this by the threadstarter.

 

Directly back to the thread topic, I think it's fine that someone starts up a business in another country with low-cost production line. What is not fine, however, is the massive underbidding. There should actually be a government organ for regulating this, as it is in some other branches. It should fairly and simply said be illegal. These are my opinions.

Edited by chroma
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they can go a lot higher in their pricing and still get projects in "our markets".

 

But they want to win work, they'll use whatever tools they have in the toolbox to do that. You really want them to put their price up, so that it then makes your quote looks more attractive to a potential client?

 

There should actually be a government organ for regulating this, as it is in some other branches. It should fairly and simply said be illegal.

 

To quote the bard - "That way madness lies". Surely we've all seen enough by now to know that governments can't be relied upon to run a bath let alone adjudicate on the fairness of what arguably has an element of "art" to it.

 

I think Tracey Emin's "my bed" is sh_t, yet it sold for $1.3 million or something ridiculous, but there is apparently an element of "art" to it and if someone is mug enough to pay that much... I really don't believe it falls within the remit of any government to say er, actually it's only worth X dollars. We're not making machine parts here, it's not quantifiable, the skills we bring to our work, so how could some lazy bureaucrat in government say what our work is worth?

 

None of it stacks up in my humble opinion, we shouldn't try and make their business worse by setting the Govt on them or setting AutoDesk on them to check if they're using legit software or anything - we shouldn't look at them at all, we should look at us and how we can make our business better to compete. In saying that I'm not suggesting for a second that I can win work compared to those guys or you or anyone here, but I certainly am not blaming anyone else for that other than myself and am not expecting the Govt to fix the market to help me out either.

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I really don't believe it falls within the remit of any government to say er, actually it's only worth X dollars. We're not making machine parts here, it's not quantifiable, the skills we bring to our work, so how could some lazy bureaucrat in government say what our work is worth?

 

Hehe. Just had a laugh by imaging the scenario if such organ were put into function. Hell would break loose. Nothing I'd want, but in a perfect world ... :)

Edit: Some people actually work like they are producing machine parts. Eg. those who bastantly put a quote on $199 or something else for whatever kind of work.

 

None of it stacks up in my humble opinion, we shouldn't try and make their business worse by setting the Govt on them or setting AutoDesk on them to check if they're using legit software or anything - we shouldn't look at them at all, we should look at us and how we can make our business better to compete. In saying that I'm not suggesting for a second that I can win work compared to those guys or you or anyone here, but I certainly am not blaming anyone else for that other than myself and am not expecting the Govt to fix the market to help me out either.

 

Having the same terms tool-wise is a good start for me. If it's hard for them to buy legal software, maybe the tool producers should look into decreasing their prices for these countries or areas to match with the rest of the living standard costs. - Or maybe they (archviz) should just increase their prices to be able to pay for the tools. But this is off-topic, and in general for those who use pirated software. Not blaming specific people for doing that, important to point out.

 

To add to what you say, I'd like to say that we can only look at ourselves regarding to competition just to a certain point, and that point is where A) we by any means could not go any lower on price, and B) if that price were the only parameter. Now B will hopefully never be true for all our customers, so that leaves us with competing on quality, price, network building and generally improving for a better customer experience.

 

I still can't help believing that they could go higher in price and still get the same projects, though...

 

 

Edit: Did some spelling corrections.

Edited by chroma
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I agree with the idea that perhaps the software ought to be priced differently to encourage legal participation in some of these jurisdictions where, (sort of like I started) $12 buys you 500 litres of fuel as opposed to places in the West where it may only get you 8 or 10 or 12 litres of fuel. Max looks mighty pricey by that measure in some of these countries.

 

Yep unfortunately if we can't win work at a price that will put food on the table, then we need to look to a "Plan B".

 

It's a good job my wife is the real brains in the family otherwise I'd be screwed ;)

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