The real question is why hasn't he done this already? It's a fairly obvious solution. I suspect that there is some other force at work here, though I'm at a loss to guess what it might be.
It's too bad that the NYTimes didn't raise this question.
I know an African woman who used to go to the living room of some lady that charged her 20 pounds for work that she could easily charge 50 for - African hair can take a lot of work. This lady never raises her prices.
But she gets booked full 3 months in advance, and everyone who goes there raves about here and thinks she is ridiculously cheap.
Now, granted, a lot of those clients would disappear if she charged 30 or 40 or even 50. But she could afford to lose a lot of them, and even at 50 she'd still be cheaper than most similar quality competition in the area.
Simple solution to testing the prices? Hold back some time slots and offer a "rush" service to those willing to pay extra. Use a sob story about how this is family time she is giving up for you. Worst case she books slightly fewer slots for a while, and gives up on it.
But she is too scared to even try because she is terrified of customers going elsewhere... Despite the fact that people are willing to schedule 3 months in advance to get their hair done in her living room instead of walking into their local salon the same day.
Absolutely. I hate it when otherwise compelling articles fail to even raise a screamingly obvious question, much less answer it. The cynical me wonders if it is because the writers actually do know the answer, and it somehow weakens or distracts from their point. Or perhaps requires the telling of an impolite truth.
yes, things are not so simple. This man is not an idiot. He understand that raising the price could bring in more money with the same number of clients.
'He just increased his price'- Is not very nice if you want to get new customers.
Raising prices may actually increase sales. I think some of the problem is a lot of us are seeing this relationship between the tailor and his clients through the lens of software or service providers. For any right thinking business person there is no pride in going into hacker meetup and saying "I just had to upgrade from the 28 dollar a month plan to the 39 dollar a month plan at saas-of-the-month.com". Guys that buy 4000 dollar suits are operating in a different world. They pay 500 bucks for the custom fit, and the other 3500 bucks pays for being able to say they paid 4K for a suit AND you can't get one when it comes time to play "biggest dick on table" at the next board room meeting.
As patio11 often points out you're wrong about software & suits being in different worlds.
Any real software business is happy to upgrade from the 28/mo plan to the 39/mo plan if it gets even the tinniest benefit. I routinely approve those sort of expenses without spending more then 2 seconds thinking about them.
> Any real software business is happy to upgrade from the 28/mo plan to the 39/mo plan if it gets even the tinniest benefit.
But I'm not referring to benefits, I'm referring to "bragging rights". Say your company was utilizing a SaaS that offered a "Freelancer" tier and an "Agency" tier (where "Freelancer" costs less and offers less than "Agency"). Now if your company's needs could be serviced by the limits of the "Freelancer" tier would you pay more for the "Agency" tier just for the prestige of saying you pay for the "Agency" tier? No, you wouldn't. However that does happen with suits (or watches or luxury cars or other luxury goods), it's signalling.
FWIW: I was reading an article from Patrick / Patio11 just the other day when he talks about having experience with large companies upgrading their SaaS package just because the upgraded name sounded better on an expense report.
So it sounds like some SaaS upgrades may, in fact, be linked to the name of the package and nothing more!
It's too bad that the NYTimes didn't raise this question.