Thread: Vantage points
View Single Post
Old 12-30-2012, 10:20 AM   #20
Chris Li
 
Chris Li's Avatar
Dojo: Aikido Sangenkai
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Join Date: Dec 2000
Posts: 3,313
United_States
Offline
Re: Vantage points

Quote:
Joe Curran wrote: View Post
Dear Chris,
Of course your listed named Aikido teachers charge fees , after all they are full time Aikidoka.I do not think that this is being a bread head.eg money men or unworthy. I know personally at least one person on your list who has donated his time and his fee to assist others.I also know that the course fees per person charged by our group are certainly less costly than the price per person at I/P related courses.Now I am not saying that the I/P instructors are overcharging for their services since I have no information concerning the overheads of the course.I am just saying there is a cost differential.The bottom line is that if one wants a product one pays the price,be it a tin of baked beans or an I/P course/Aikido seminar.One has a choice.
As far as video material is concerned I cannot speak for other groups or individuals but all our groups video material are available to all interested parties.In case anybody reading this thinks that sales of this material enables me to enjoy a Brad Pitt lifestyle[I wish ] all monies raised by my efforts go to our group to boost our funds.May I also state that in relation to prices charged by others for dvd material we do not charge an arm and a leg for our stuff?Happy New Year , Joe.
In my experience Dan charges much less then most (all?) of the people on that list. The per head cost may be higher, but the overall cost is generally much lower because of the limit on the number of participants to allow hands on contact time.

When we had Doshu in Honolulu last year there were almost 500 people on the mat for his three hours of instruction time - 180 minutes. Take out the warm-ups, lecturing, and walking around time, and you get a situation in which most people don't even get to touch him once! The per head fees were similar. Doshu's fees were....much much higher.

When we had Doshu in Honolulu last year most of our profit (almost $20,000) came from the brochures/DVD/t-shirt/etc. poster sales (that ended up going to the Red Cross for tsunami relief efforts in Japan). So it can run into some serious money.

Which is beside the point, I guess. I'm not accusing anybody - but I am saying that it's very very hard to point "profit motive" fingers at Dan without also pointing them at all of those folks as well.

For that matter, many AikiWeb members post their own seminars and workshops (I do too, of course) - very few of which are free, many make posts promoting those workshops, but none of them that I've seen are accused of a "profit motive" or "commercialism".

It seems like a hypocritical point to me, that's all.

Happy New Year Joe!

Best,

Chris

  Reply With Quote