Hi Ed - As a non-marketing guy, here's my thoughts.
Customers associate brands with specific qualities and features. It's the value that a customer attributes to those qualities and features (not the brand) that makes one pen worth 1000 times another. Over time customers begin to automatically assume that a branded item will have the qualities / features that they have come to expect, making the brand worth something. But brands can be degraded easily.
But what are those qualities and features that make one pen worth 1000x?
Materials - precious metals (not so much resin
) and gemstones will easily ramp up the price.
Methods - Carving, hot enamel, guillioche, creative casting (metals or resin) all add to the price. Some of these methods are not suitable for mass production, at least not at the same level of quality as by hand, and will add lots of value. For example I can use a CNC to carve an intricate low relief design on a pen body. But a CNC can't easily do undercuts and some other things that make a hand carved item really stand out.
Technology - Creative filling systems. New materials never used before. This sort of thing all adds value.
Artistry - The special creative spark that is hard to quantify. You can put 1000 people in 1000 shops equipped with every tool / machine known to man and a selection of raw materials. One or two will emerge with pens that most would acknowledge as incredible works of art. A few more will emerge with very nice pens. Most will be capable of emerging with something capable of writing....but they won't win any awards. A work of art that writes will be worth a lot more than something that just write.
So, I see a lot of reasons why one pen might sell for $1,000 and another for $1. What I can't fully explain is why some things (not just pens) sell for $1,000 when they really should be selling for way less. Brand / Status / Clever marketing might account for some of that, but I'm out of my depth here.
Ed
