New Laser Rag

You are quite right, by selling thousands, hundreds of thousands of Lasers over the years they have done a very good job of maximising profits. By ordering 1000 sails at a time or whatever they do they secure a very good price for themselves, meaning they can make more profit selling the sail to the customer at the market rate, in fact slightly below it. The upshot of that is that Lasers are still being built today unlike so many of the other boats of its time. For you this means that your boat is worth probably 5 times as much as if the laser was a dead class with no new boats being built. A pretty scabby old laser which doesn't leak too much normally fetches upwards of £1000, a leaky one will get around £800. That, for a dinghy which is available in such large numbers is a staggeringly high resale value. Similar boats of that age struggle to sell at all and if they do are worth £500 because anyone who is going to buy one is going to be spending a couple of hundred quid a year to keep and sail it, so they can probably afford £500. 

So, for anyone who moans about manufacturer supplied kit being too pricey, especially when they do manage to sell it all in huge volumes, it is probably worth having a second thought that the builders are doing something to protect your investment. 

Oh and before anyone says "oh but its the class that keeps the prices up, not the builders" - Rubbish! If the boat was not built at the right price and the right quality from the beginning, there would be no class. If all of a sudden you couldnt buy a new one, the class would die out eventually, maybe not completely but certainly to a level where nobody would be able to bulk buy sails. The price of which would likely double...

No, well some of them may be, but that was not my point. You seem to be missing that bit!

A successful business will charge as much as it can possibly get away with for any product, and laser are clearly selling a lot of sails. So maybe, just maybe, they are doing something right. In doing this thing right they are also doing all the things that I mention above to keep your investment safe and the class thriving. I don't think I need to explain that bit again.

The point is, support your class, your builder and your club and they will support you. If you choose to go and buy a replica then that is fine, I never have, I like to train with what I race with. I also like to support any class and club that I join. I even go to BMW for the service on my car when I know I could get it done cheaper elsewhere, it will pay off when I go and trade it in...