Well well a lot has been said about this brands image as a poser brand. I´m not getting into that.
A few friends and I want give a good friend of ours some Rapha kit for his birthday since he is an old school rider and prefers wool in all weather.
So I was given the chore of ordering everything.
Visited the rapha homepage and collected the items totalling a staggering 400 GBP for a few items but hell he´s a good friend and he´ll use it a lot. What better person to give it to?
Anyway. All selected out I went trught the purchasing process. Suddenly because my adress in in the European Union the price changed from 400 GBP to 600 Euros excluding postage! Considering the exchange rate betwwen the pound and the euro is almost identical this 200 Euro price jump took me by complete surprise.
Try it yourself at www.rapha.cc see the huge difference in price when comparing Euros and Pounds.
Turns out Raphas prices are different depending on where you live and ofcourse the pound has lost value to the Euro recently.
Since it is 2008 kit and Rapha claims their wool kit is made in Scotland well they should not be loosing money when selling to me in GBP.
So I contact their customer service telling them. Hi guys have an order want to pay in pounds and maybe you should correct your pricing.
Rapha then REFUSES!!!! to sell to me in GBP no I have to pay the higher Euro price. But if I lived in the UK I could without any problem order in GBP they tell me.
Anyway we decide not to order from Rapha because such pricing policies cant really be accepted by any customer, can it? At least they removed any inclination of mine to ever own a piece of Rapha clothing.
They must be a huge succes since they can treat customers this way in the middle of the financial crisis.