Can £130 for a goggle be justified?

A snowHead

alex_heney, try re-reading it, and then the whole thread. And I'll give you a clue - the last paragraph rolling eyes

Touch a nerve did it?

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Chasseur, I got it... thought para 1 was quite funny and totally agree with the rest.

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andyph,

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Actually after today I'll pay whatever for goggles that I can actually see out of in low flat light!

However, generally, I am in the you get what you pay for school and luckily I can afford to pay for the better quality these days

After all it is free

Oakley Goggles: £25. What a pile of rubbish, you can tell the price label isn't high enough...

http://www.sunglasses-shop.co.uk/Oakley-Goggles-Oakley-O-Frame-XS-Matte-White-02-494/14847

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queen bodecia, Actually I think you *are* ridiculing people for spending what they like on goggles, yet it was only 2 weeks ago you ridiculed a man wanting a holiday for under 300 pounds! A little hypocritical, non?

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Has anyone ever tried skiing with infra-red/night vision goggles? No seriously, cos if you don't need visible light then problem solved, n'est-ce pas?

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i can not remember what I paid for my cheap goggles (maybe £40 a 4 years ago) but they were useless in white out conditions a few years ago and were fogging up as I became more distressed as the only person on a piste (last one off a chair before it closed), I was stuck for 30 mins sitting under a big piste map sign waiting for a tiny easing in the weather to move to the next piste marker that would just come in to vision for a second or two. When I eventually walked back to Galzig gondola (could not see it from less than 30 meters or so) I bought the best pair of flat light goggles I could find (UVEX ?) that acted to 'light up' the piste. Not sure again how much I paid for them, maybe Euro 120 perhaps but they were the best investment I have ever made and have allowed me to board in all flat light conditions when others have been falling or heading to the bar !!

So for me the answer is yes.

One thing i will add to the thread is i believe a lot of ski & board clothing is overstyled & underdesigned. That is comparative to mountaineering clothing which is generally based on function rather than form. Though often the later will be a pleasant off shoot of the former.

I'd certainly be more inclined to spend £250+ on a Arcterx/Patagonia/Marmot mountaineering jacket than a spider/HH/Burton ski/board jacket.

You know it makes sense.

I've had the A Frame when it first came out, along with the O Frame with persimmon lens for low/flat light conditions. As I've looked after my kit, these two pairs lasted the better part of almost a decade (can't remember when the A Frames came out but it was mid-late 90s). No scratches, no nicks or cuts - just perfect. Sold both of them this year for half the price I paid for each - good result considering, but the condition was outstanding, like all my kit.

Felt a need to change this year, and I got myself 2 pairs of Electrics - EG2 and EG1s, with a spare Rose Silver Chrome lens for low/flat light - these aren't cheap but I got a good deal, esp top of the line EG2. Will be buying another pair of Electrics to fit the Rose Chrome lens to save me faffing about changing lens. I got such a great deal that it would be silly to pass - I think cost price for one, and about 30-35% off for the other.

Basically, its only worth what someone will pay. For those that go through goggles and don't see the need and yours works, fine. For those that look after their kit, paying a little more is no hardship.

But to me, quality sometimes (note the word sometimes!) cost a little more. My eyes are the only pair that I have - I pay what I personally deem is reasonable to protect them, esp from UV rays and snow blindness from reflected sunlight. Some of the technology (esp spherical lenses) are NOT found on the cheaper models with only cylindrical lenses with poor or non-existent anti-fog coating, or non double-glazed lenses.

The costly bit of the goggle is the lens - the cheaper goggle-lenses are just tinted with basic UVA and UVB protection. The more expensive goggles have spherical lenses, anti-fog, anti-scratch and double-glazed lenses, which also have an additional reflective coating (eg iridium, chrome etc) to reflect sunlight that bounces off snow that can cause snow blindness.

You pays your money, you taketh your chances. I alwasy buy the best that I think is reasonable.

Good luck!! Very Happy

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psbbst, welcome to snowHead

!

i've bought two pairs of ~£40 bolles and they've worked fine, except in one instance of very low light conditions, which i managed to get through by riding very slowly. if i could afford it, i would get the more expensive product simply because of the experience i have of buying other pieces of kit (and clothing) over the years. generally i live by the "depending on its usage, the product is worth spending more/can get away with spending less on" motto.

just my 2p. <- gosh, this kitty's getting rather full. anyone think we have enough for a round of drinks at boris' bar?

A snowHead

4 pages in 2 days! Smile

But I can see the point being addressed from page 1:

Some people go on ski holidays and others go skiing!

The "holiday skier" will stay in the pub when weather proof too much for their £20 sunglasses/goggle. The skiers will be out skiing the powder in their £220 goggles!!!

Granted, if I can get the £220 goggles for £20, I would. But if the choice is skiing vs NOT skiing in certain weather, the choice will be drastically different. Especially after spending a considerable sum to get to the mountain in the first place, not able to go skiing due to inadequate gear sounds to me penny wise pound foolish.

A snowHead

abc, depends on whether the extra £200 is paying for technology and R&D, or for Advertising and "exclusivity".

It does appear to be one of the few areas of ski gear where some people seem to automatically equate price with quality. I have been allowed to demo goggles on the hill by a shop but I don't think that it is that common. I now ski with one pair of smiths, and one pair of scotts. I did 15 years with 2 pairs of Bolles and never missed a day because of visibility. So I am struggling a bit to see what the money above the £50-70 level would buy me. I also know that people who invest more money in something - often invest more positive emotion in it.

We saw in the UK how Crocs captured a certain market for what was basically a piece of moulded cheap plastic. I didn't buy into it as they looked to much like the cheapo garden clogs I get from Lidl. Yet they managed to persuade millions of people how wonderful they were. Then people suddenly saw that they market knock-offs were nearly as good at 10% the price, and the business has almost gone.

I do think there is a touch of emperors new clothes about skiing fashion, and there certainly seems to be some fetishisation of the Oakley Brand.

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abc,

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psbbst, the point is that there are cars which cost rather more than the 997 and yet go round the ring slower... so why would people buy those?

In the end something is worth what people are willing to pay for it. But there is a huge advertising and marketing effort to add value to brands and persuade people to pay more for items. Take the examples of perfumes (and look at the cost of R&D, product and packaging which is a very small proportion of the sale cost) versus Milk (where it isn't). I suspect that Goggles are closer to the perfume end than the milk end, and skis closer to the milk end than the perfume end.

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psbbst,

After all it is free

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I carry my alternative lenses at all times. I've needed to swap on many occasions and you can be miles from base when the cloud rolls in.

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abc, I have skied when it is snowing, although luckily it's not often I have been caught out. When I did a full season, I didn't ski every day and tended to ski to nice weather days because I could.

As to driving up prices, I was being general rather than referring specifically to ski gear. I believe prices are set by market forces. Take two identical t-shirts, if one has a 'Henleys' label and one has an own brand label, people will pay substantially more for the Henleys product believing they are getting better quality for their money. My argument is that they are not. They might be getting slightly better quality, but that possible increase in quality is substantially less than the increase in price. They are mainly paying for the brand label. Because of this, brands are able to charge much higher margin prices because the suckers, sorry consumers, are prepared to pay these prices. I believe firmly in value for money, and I don't believe many of these designer brands offer that.

There was a interesting post by someone way back up this thread mentioning that the highly technical ski/mountain wear, more specifically aimed at ski tourers and mountaineers, is actually cheaper than many of the perceived top skiing brands, yet offers a much higher level of performance in adverse conditions. That's a clear cut case of brand snobbery to me.

However, there are people out there who love their brands (my sister is one such person) but are never willing to pay RRP and seek out bargains in end of season sales and from low-cost retailers. If you have to do the brand thing, surely that's the way to go. Cut their margins and force them to price their goods realistically.

You know it makes sense.

We last went skiing the year before last, with our £15 Decathlon goggles. It was very icy for the first couple of days, and our instructor thought it too difficult to take us away from the nursery slopes.
It snowed big time on the tuesday night and all through wednesday and half of the class had signed up to do an excursion on the wednesday afternoon.
Since he now only had four or five of us to look after, he took us up the mountain. We got out of the gondola and walked into a blizzard! This was the first time that we'd had need of our goggles - and they were worse than useless! They fogged up instantly. We both had to revert to our sunglasses, which were marginally better in that we could at least see where we were going part of the time.
By the time we had lost enough altitude to get relief from the wind amongst the trees, we both had icicles hanging from our eyelashes and very sore eyes.
We didn't have much money with us, but went straight to the shop in resort and bought a decent pair of goggles for my wife - costing about £50. Couldn't afford any for me at that time, so I just made do with my glasses. Fortunately conditions were never as bad again during our stay.
We brought the £15 goggles back with us, thinking that they would be OK to give to the kids if they wanted to try a skiiing holiday, but after thinking about it we just threw them in the bin. Why would we want to give substandard gear to our kids?
So, as I said earlier, I'm getting some Oakleys for my birthday (50 Crying or Very sad

) Not cheap, but I doubt they will become landfill any time soon.

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A snowHead

youspurs1, you could have flogged the goggle to motor-cross bikers wink

A snowHead

Call me a cynic, but the more I hear people talk about how the price is mainly taken up with huge research and development costs, the more I think that the huge marketing and advertising costs have really done their job.

Companies like Oakley don't want their customers to come away thinking that what they are actually paying for are all those glossy magazine ads and sponsorship deals, or all those market research people who are out there trying to find out the key words that their customers associate with the brand. You've really reached the holy grail if your customers are not only personally convinced but will also happily tell all your other potential customers on internet forums that the coating of Pro-V and Biffidus Actiregularis is what makes their product so different from their competitors (and thus worth paying at least an extra 25% for).

The commodity fetishism that stoatsbrother mentions seems to be the elephant in the room throughout this whole conversation. As was also said above, it is well known that people invest more emotion into things they pay higher prices for. Look up "post purchase rationalization" and there is a lot of fascinating information out there about how it works - I don't think anyone could seriously deny that there isn't strong evidence for it on this thread.

Oakley make very good goggles...but then they bloody well should do for that price. I certainly don't have any problem with people paying £130 for a pair. Personally I quite fancy a pair of Adidas Yodai's, although if I'm honest its not because I think they are going to perform any better than the £35 pair of Bolle Sharkfin's I've borrowed from a mate (which have always been great). I've read the reviews for the Yodai's so I know they'll also do the job, but beyond that I just think they are the best looking pair on the market at the moment. If I want them then I'll have to pay the price for them.

Given that everyone on here has obviously got enough disposable income to blow on skiing (rather than on, say food or shelter) I think it is fair to say that we've earned to right to blow it on whatever we want. If that is a £130 pair of goggles that will do the job, look cool and carry a certain cachet, well fine.

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I have had cheap goggles, cheap sunglasses and also expensive(ish) goggles (Spy) and expensive sunglasses (Oakley with interchangeable lenses).

Without a shadow of a doubt the expensive stuff is in a different league to the cheap stuff and (accidental loss aside) I would rather pay once for expensive, good looking stuff than have to replace cheap stuff every couple of years, suffer poorer performance and probably pay more in the long run.

Same goes for gloves. Spent a fortune 5 years ago on a fantastic pair of gloves. Still look and behave brand new. Mates who spent way less are on their 3rd pair by now.

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queen bodecia (and others), how do you measure quality objectively?

Loads of statements on this thread "Goggles X are not 6.5 times better than Goggles Y", "the increase in quality is not proportional to the increase in price". I'm curious, what is the generally accepted scale for measuring quality?

Otherwise, statements such as those above make little sense. For a good-weather skier, the difference in quality between £20 and £60 goggles is limited, and then zero if you go to £130. For an all-conditions skier, perhaps the extra quality of the £130 goggles is 10x or more, if they allow him/her to ski better in difficult conditions. Same argument about Gore-tex (or eVent etc) vs less advanced materials.

As for branding vs pure research cost. Of course a lot of the price goes into marketing, advertising etc, rather than technical features. But it's pointless to raise that issue. As a consumer, you do your research, and if the product with the technical characteristics you want is available at price X, then you decide whether you want to pay X or go for your next best choice. Whether X is 75% research cost or 25% research cost matters less. If you're happy with something costing 20% of X, great for you.

Of course there's fashion too, and that's independent of quality and technical features, and very much a personal choice. I wouldn't wear Spyder even if I got it for free. But if people like it, great, and if they want to spend £1000 for it, fine.

(Incidentally, my own goggles vary from mid-priced, below £100 - Alpina and Smith - to the Tchibo £20 ones as an emergency reserve. Tchibo happens not to work with my helmet though, they push on my nose and give me headaches, I guess due to blocked sinuses? But they're a good product).

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Has anyone got better than anecdotal evidence of expensive goggles performing significantly better in really bad visibility than say a cheaper model in the same range with the same colour lens? I've never found a goggle yet that was a cure for real whiteouts or very low contrast light and I've worn a lot of goggles and been out in some conditions when the mountain has been empty. I've found the Scott amplifier lens to be good for me personally but have never tried an Oakley (rather put off by the ubquious branding I'm afraid).

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Having worn glasses/contact lenses like forever, I'd be inclined to not economise on anything eye-related (that doesn't mean though that something is automatically better because it is more expensive).

Having said that - it is inifinetly more annoying if really expensive goggles/sunglasses fall out of the chairlift. Not to mention the old classic of somebody sitting down on them during lunch Confused

After all it is free

something which hasn't really been discussed is the backup you get from more expensive brands. stories are legion of Smith and Oakley replacing broken items bought ages ago with completely new pieces of kit

of course, you are paying for this indirectly and it may not be important to you so you may not want to pay the extra, but it is a consideration when you are deciding whether something is good value for money

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Arno, I said so higher up and skisimon agreed, but we've probably lost the will to live by now Laughing

Help!!

Can £130 for a goggle be justified?

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