There are many factors that affect the retail cost of our products. Here are just a few.
Quality
Most LED holiday lights are mass manufactured from cheaper components, which is why many of them have a lackluster appearance and high failure rates. Tru-Tone bulbs are made from high-quality components like those you would find in household LED products from major brands. In order to achieve their warm glow and authentic vintage look, we use older, smaller scale production techniques that are more labor intensive, less common, and more costly. Every detail of our products – such as the color temperature and shape of our filaments, the unique shape of our C7 bulbs, and our finely tuned color coatings – add to the cost of our products... but are also what make Tru-Tone bulbs so special.
Resources
Tru-Tone is still a very small company and we have limited resources. Large corporations are able to achieve lower costs by manufacturing in truly massive quantities. The comparatively small size of our production runs means that everything costs a little more. We hope that with your help and enthusiasm, we’ll reach a point where all of our products cost less, so we can pass those savings on to you.
Import Costs
International freight and import taxes are currently high. Because of current trade relations with China many of our products also incur an additional, higher than usual tariffs.