Price Factors
Porcelain is an energy product and is therefore particularly dependent on crude oil and global energy market prices. Porcelain and glass are much more affected by this than many other goods. Porcelain and ceramics are very heavy goods and require very elaborate packaging to avoid the risk of breakage. The raw materials for porcelain come from many distant countries and can only be assembled into a porcelain mass at the production site. This makes porcelain a very freight and transport cost-intensive product, especially in the case of imported goods from abroad. The third almost incalculable price factor is the currency and exchange rates. This applies both to the procurement of raw materials and to the purchase of imported goods.
This means that the procurement prices of porcelain can change within a few hours due to political or geological factors, among other things, making a serious, long-term price calculation very difficult.
However, a number of other factors - outside of production and procurement costs - also have a noticeable influence on our calculation. The chart above shows the main components of the price composition of our porcelain (as of 2008). For a better overview, we have marked the government costs and import duties in red. We pay around 34% of our price to the state and the EU, while the end consumer pays at least 53% in official duties together with VAT.
In addition, conformity, the regulations of the Consumer Goods Ordinance, the Product Liability Act, the relevant EU regulations, various certifications, laboratory tests, TÜV tests, packaging regulations and much more must be complied with.
The delivery service for a collection of more than 4,000 items and ideas in porcelain requires a high level of administrative and logistical expertise and considerable storage space. Many thousands of pallet spaces are necessary to guarantee delivery capability and to utilise the production lines of our partners. We bear these costs with a high level of entrepreneurial commitment, rationally and efficiently.
Without this commercial discipline, it would not be possible to guarantee attractive price stability and at the same time take on many sales tasks for our retail partners.