Kontextmaschine

26th March 2023

Post reblogged from YOU'RE ALL TRAPPED IN HERE WITH ME with 2,018 notes

How cheap can they make a sewing machine?
My job is to sell sewing machines. We basically sell two lines (“brands”, though the same company runs both names). One is the $150-$400 range, and one is the $600-$18,000 range. There’s a little bit of overlap with one low-range machine being almost $500 and two high-range machines being just under $550, but mostly there’s the low line and the premier line.
People often come in with an expectation of what a sewing machine should do, and how much it should cost. It is not uncommon for those expectations to be incongruous with reality. Low-priced machines usually don’t have the features that people who sew want their machine to have. The people who control stocking in my company have decided to largely have our budget line be machines that will meet people’s expectations of features, even if that means all out models are out of the expected price range. We don’t have a machine that’s as cheap as you want, but we do have a machine that’s as good as you expect it to be.
People are often surprised that our least-expensive machines are still over $150. However, I happen to have a sewing machine collection that includes several machines under $150, so I thought for funsies sake we could take a dive into my collection, as I talk about exactly how stripped-down the features can get on a sewing machine. There will be pictures so there is also a jump.
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