Aliens For Sale at Fixe

CCH Aliens are now available at the Fixe Website.
Check it out.
Fixe Website

$80!!! I thought people on MP were douches for selling for $60. I guess you can never predict capitalistic greed. Maybe this is a supply/demand thing. If no one buys them the price will go down?

It might be that they are trying to recoup some start up costs from tooling out a new line of gear, all the paperwork, sourced materials etc.... and they thought based on hype alone in the climbing community that $80 would be an easy sale for a while.

My guess is that just like any product, it will go down in price, eventually.

Eric Hamer wrote:Maybe this is a supply/demand thing. If no one buys them the price will go down?

Supply and demand are part of the equation but I think you are giving the demand to much credit. As much as a few of us are foaming at the mouth for new aliens the majority of the climbing market probably doesn't care. The climbing community is small and the serious trad/aid/big wall portion of the community is even smaller. The upfront cost of (re)manufacturing a line of cams plus the cost to buy the design is probably the reason for the $80 price tag. If no one buys them I think it's more likely you will not see another launch of the product than the price going down.

I bet FIXE really feels like Totem screwed them right now...

Yeah, it's hard to beat the Alien prices at TotemCam for $59 including free shipping to the US and 10% off when you buy 5 or more cams.

Totem Cams

I would safely say one of two things will happen

1. Fixe will lower the price to Totem's price

2. Fixe will realize they missed the boat and eventually only Totem will be manufacturing the Alien look-alike.

It is lunacy to expect people to pay $20 more for something, even if there is brand loyalty with Fixe, especially in a community where the term "dirtbag" is so liberally used and applicable.

EDIt: John beat me to it - See Above post

The $80 is spot on price wise for Aliens using standard retail supply chains (if not a bit low) based on MANY posts on other Alien topics. They're difficult to produce and thus result in a higher cost.

Totem can sell their Basics for $60 because they sell directly to the consumer (no middle men). That's how they were able to sell their very complicated Totems and keep them in the ball park of other cams as well. Totem Cams at "retail" would probably price them out of the cam market.

Malcolm's post re: Totem and Alien pricing

It sounds like the Fixe Aliens were selling well at Rock and Snow. I suspect many climbers have never heard of Totem Basics or Totem cams because they are ONLINE ONLY. We "Internet Forum Climbers" and especially we internet gear head climbers are a MINUTE subset of climbers in general. It's one of the reasons people were selling their CCH Aliens for $60 for so long (and still do sadly). The VAST majority of climbers didn't know that Aliens were going to be made again by not 1 but 2 companies.

John Wilder wrote: Btw- Totem gets away with their low price because they are selling them direct- retail, they'd clock in at $110-120. But they sell them @ wholesale- only $60. They also do this for their TotemCams, which would retail somewhere around $180, I think.

Totem has dealer pricing on Totem Basics and they are distributed from Portland, OR.

Totem Cams dropped from $80 to $70

C3's costs were supposedly due to them being very labor intensive ala Aliens and Totems. I wonder if the C3 was moved to China after the C4 line was vetted and the cost changed because of this? Purely speculation.

I'd like to see the quality of construction on the Fixe cams. Though probably not enough to buy one at the price.

I picked up one each of the Totem and Totem Basic cams a while ago, and they're so well-made I almost hate to place them and scratch them up. Very precise machining and clean construction.