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Comment by Marazan | Hacker News Reader

I've no problem with a company pricing a product to be what the market will bear.

However, Teenage Engineering claiming they were jacking the price due to "supply issues" is just insulting.

I would have agreed with you, but sourcing OLED displays is a pain in the ass. I've been personally bitten by this.

So, if they bought a 1000 obsolete displays and burned through them, it may actually take an act of God to get more. And you'll probably have to redesign your circuits.

Sure, but TE talked about the OP-1 as a 20 year project. The idea they paid the tooling costs for the body and then just slapped some remaindered displays on them stretches credulity.

I haven't heard about this. Were they busted lying about supply chain issues as an excuse to raise prices? Their stuff is pricey but cool, but if it's documented that they lied about that, that would be hard to get past.

They have talked about it some, seemed reasonable. Also understand why it would not be a popular decision though. Think running a business, and understanding success can be very temporary if you are not careful helps.

"We have had to face other costs than the actual components’ costs of course. The currency conversion, inflation, sourcing of the new component, re-coding the display, re-designing the mounting, new tools etc. are just a few of the “why”. When Teenage Engineering faced the reality of the OP-1’s future, there were only 2 choices: kill or save. We decided to save it. I understand that the new price is a disappointment to many of our fans. But I do hope some are happy that we did not kill it."

https://www.gearnews.com/teenage-engineering-open-up-about-t...

That seems unfortunate but reasonable. I don’t begrudge anyone making that choice, and I don’t begrudge anyone thinking their prices are too high (and I don’t begrudge anyone buying their stuff anyway because they think something’s cool). I was way more concerned about the claim that they lied about it and were scamming their customers somehow, but so far there’s no evidence of that.

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