Great to read a topic with such a range of views and opinions......why pay £200 for a helmet...becasue the materials used within in dictate the price tag that it yields.
You dont see a carbon fibre dashboard in a ford focus, yet in a £65k + car this feature might be an option. We choose to look beyond washing up bowl plastics and fibreglass designs that already existed and looked to push the boundaries of safety as the issue was highlighted by the injuries occurring when we looked at the market.
If you speak to people on the forum when they bought their helmets back in 2008 they snapped them up for £99, at the time we looked to offer them so people could get to see what we were trying to achieve with the design and technology. DUe to the cost factor of using Carbon Fibre and kevlar it simply isnt a cheap material to manufacture from....try finding a true CF helmet in any other sport for sub £300!
If truth be told we should be pitching them along the lines of these....
http://www.equiporium.co.uk/gpa-highlite-helmet-non-kite-marl/prod_839.htmlBats in regards to raw materials cant drastically have increasing in cost to make yet the uplift in price is rising for us to see £400-£500 bats. Yet only 12 months ago the £300 was scoffed at as people fell off their chairs/sofa at the thought of paying that much for a bat!
Safety wise we are trying to set new standards and maintain them.....some of which i cannot go into too much depth on but having the ICC use you as the flagship is always nice