looking at the price of this bring me back to the show "Shark Tank" and how each product cost and mark up from each vendor profit can be. $160 to sell would probably cost about $10-15 to make. THIS IS RIDICULOUSLY OVER PRICE
What background and experience do you have to even come up with a $10-15 range on a CNC billet machined iPhone case?
what do you know about machining?
You have 4 individually machined alloy parts..very thin pieces...what's your creative solution in fixturing these parts down being machined?
As far as I know...you cannot have a perfect part off the machine...it will always have a fixture mark. These parts have to be finished properly prior to anodizing otherwise, anodizing shows every damn nick, dent, inconsistent surface..in otherwords, anodizing magnifies a cosmetic problem in the substrate (alloy). So Element must do a lot of hand finishing prior to anodizing. Their parts are beautiful too!
There are 4 plastic parts in the corner...now I imagine this is injection molded..so how much is tooling? $15k? material cost is negligible
stainless steel screws...not that cheap
packaging..how much you think it cost for all the packaging that goes into the cases?
what about the wrench? those are CNC machined as well?
back plates and screen protector included...
usually with their high end cases you get an EVA molded transit case too...what's the cost on that?
So add up all your cost..made in the USA..so they say
I bet your nowhere even close to $10-15 range...I say in the $40-50 range..I bet they're not making much.
If they went overseas, cost would 3/4 less..but I bet quality suffers dramatically.