Formosa Fitness

I love this video by Pavel from dragondoor.com. It really shows his character as he talks about how the kettlebell has been eradicating weakness from the Russian genepool for over 300 years. Pavel's a blast.

I got a call last night about selling kettlebells that I really appreciated because it allows me to talk about an aspect of my business that isn't widely understood. First of all, we will be selling kettlebells in Taiwan very soon. Please stay tuned to the blog for updates! I've already ordered samples that looked great. The second order is on its way. Second, the economics behind the business side of it isn't so clear. I hope to clear it up a bit with this post.

I do this to try to be as open and honest as possible so I hope that's appreciated.

Heavier kettlebells are more expensive to import in ways that aren't obvious.

For example, let's say that I import some 4kg kettlebells and a 32kg kettlebell. I could buy 8 of the 4 kg kettlebells for the same weight as the 32kg kettlebell.

4 x 8kg= 32kg

1 x 32kg=32kg

So we see that from a shipping point of view, the weight would be the same. Yes, the bulk of the total package is also part of the shipping price but between the two (especially regarding kettlebells) the weight is the more important factor. They don't tend to come in large packages except for the GS model (I'll explain later).

So continuing the example, let's say (again, this is just an example!) that I charged NT$1500 for one 4kg kettlebell and NT$5600 for the 32kg kettlebell. Let's see what I could potentially make (gross, not net):

4kg: 8 x 1500= NT$12,000

32kg: 1 x 5600= NT$5,600

Difference: NT$6400!!!

As you can see, that's a huge potential profit difference. The result is that the larger the kettlebell, the lower the profit margin. By the way, the larger kettlebells do cost more to produce, as well. But I think that's fairly obvious.

A consequence of this is that larger kettlebells will be priced much higher than lower ones to try to minimize the shrinking profit margin but hopefully not beyond affordability. Still, larger kettlebells will tend to be specialist items that will need to be priced accordingly.

Again, I give this brief glimpse behind the curtain so that potential customers will understand some of the complexities of the business.

As always, we appreciate your business.