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Originally Posted by fubar I am not sure about that. I think the price is considerable considering. It also seems like the most popular mini-itx case out there and when you consider that only a small percentage of people own (and were able to order) the case, that is very remarkable, imho. This was without much of feedback of customers and all by word-of-mouth and the designers communicating with the clients/customers/end users. Aren't computer cases Lian Li's bread and butter? That's mostly what they manufacture or it's a large part of their products? They look like they have a wide line of cases yet the most popular one they produced is not their brand and had design input from outside sources.
They probably could sell way more. At least, probably way more cases than their other itx and micro-ATX cases. If you read other hardware forums, it is one of the more popular cases and anyone wanting a SFF case is probably going to look at it - at least, compared to other $100-$300 cases out there and there aren't even a large supply out there. If it was widely available and for $200 and considering the potential sales, isn't there a chance that the economies of scale would still be profitable? |
We can't assume that this is Lian Li's most popular and best-selling Mini ITX case. It may be but the enthusiast Mini ITX market is a vocal, but very niche part of the case business. And this is a business that is already well-served by Lian LI, Bitfenix and Silverstone. Throw in Fractal Design with their Node series and there are many options available.
I don't know many people in my personal life who water cool beyond the regular 120mm or 240mm AIO cooler. In addition there is different tooling and a different production line to go along with the different panels that are required to create and manufacture this case. Much of the interest was sparked over a long period of time through the [H]ardforum and it was a fairly long time to go through design, crowdfunding, manufacturing and shipping, so this may not be the most telling set of factors to gauge public interest IMHO.
But if it is $200.00 I think this is a more-than-fair price for a custom, somewhat "one-of-a-kind", relatively low volume product, and we can't confuse potential sales numbers with what has sold thus far. Lian LI can't give production contracts based on anything other than order size, and their production costs plus profit are what are passed on to the NCase boys. Take into account air shipping, as boat is too slow, and it's definitely not an overly high price from what I can see (not taking into account the gouging some "middle men" want to charge).