Group buy marquee monitors?

[bimm25e]

So they have these pretty sweet looking ultrawide monitors on alibaba but it seems like they hammer you with shipping costs.
Has anyone bought these? Maybe some group buy thing could make it make sense

[lilshawn]

a group buy at does not make sense, and i'll tell you why.

- the discount cut offs start at 49 and up, this alone means you have to get 48 other people to buy in. this is already approaching 10k. sure if you need 44, you can throw another 5 on there to get above the amount and get 49 for the price of 44.

- the shipping is basically going to scaling with the quantity, so it doesn't make sense to try and group buy, since you'd never convince more than 50 people just to save 21 bucks... but end up still paying basically the same amount for shipping as 1 unit does.

- the logistics of shipping 50 panels is going to eat the discount anyway since you are looking at shipping pretty much an entire crate. monitors need padding (probably styrofoam) and boxes, and despite not weighing much, are going to consume a lot of space. sure, it's cheaper than individually shipping onesies and twosies even 10 by DHL or fedex or chinapost... but you still have to pay for shipping the sheer size of what 50 units is size and weight wise. this wouldn't be able to be delivered DHL or fedex or china post... you'd be looking at it going on a boat in a container with a bunch of other stuff coming from china, and you have to pay the guy dealing with the container hi shipping fee on top of the shipping you pay the manufacturer. i can say with absolute certainty it would take at least 2 months for it to get to north america. (i was quoted 42-50 days for a pallet shipment from china, and it was almost spot on 50)

then, having to go to the arrival port and picking it up yourself or paying a logistics company and a separate shipping cost to that company to pick it up and deliver it to you.

if you bought an entire shipping container of monitors, you could get a deal on shipping, but then you are buying a shipping container (about 1400 to 3600 usd for a 40 foot container (about 4000 by the time you factor in the logistics getting it to the port from where it is shipping from) or anywhere from 1100 to 3200 for a 20 foot)  and any discount you'd get on the quantity, you'd be spending on the container and the freight anyway.

then you have to have the logistics to pick up a container from the port IE you better own a heavy duty truck and 3 axle trailer or paying a semitruck driver to pick it up since a 40 foot container with contents could be pushing 30,000 or 40,000 lbs.

then you have a container you have to get rid of/sell to the next guy shipping from north america to somewhere else.

then you have 4000 monitors you have to get rid of and a $405,000 bill

i've looked into bulk shipping from china to have them manufacture equipment for us, it's not great and there isn't a real good, cheap way of doing it.... especially at small to medium quantities. you have to go big, REALLY big, otherwise it's not worth it.