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As many quickly realise as soon as you pick up your first kitten bringing a cat into your home it’s just like bringing a new family member or a child into the world.
Most cats owners that we speak to treat their feline friends if they are fully part of the family and obviously want to ensure that they get some of the finer things in life to ensure that they stay happy and content.
From eating the best cat food to getting that latest cat toy.
Cat owners are always on the hunt for gifts to spoil their special friend with on every occasion from Christmas, right through to their birthdays!
Cat trees have become a staple part and a very important product for cat owners particularly over the last five years due to an ever growing urban landscape and the inability to safely let cats roam free outdoors.
Therefore, finding a product such as a cat tree that can give them all of the natural physical and mental stimulation indoors is incredibly important!
But why are cats trees so expensive?
There are quite a few different answers to this question which we will go through in this article..
Firstly, shipping bulky and heavy cat trees is not cheap!
On average, the shipping carriers will charge anything from between £15-£25 per carton.
Therefore, for the extremely large cat trees that are usually delivered in multiple cartons the shipping cost can exceed £50-£75 on some occasions which add a considerable amount onto the cost of delivering it to your home.
Furthermore, using high-quality materials is not cheap.
The cost of timber and particleboard and MDF has risen dramatically over the last two years particularly during 2021 where we are seeing rises of between 20 and 30% of the cost of the raw materials to manufacture these products.
Secondly, the cost of fabric has also risen at the same rate as wood and many of the high quality and high strength fabrics need to be imported and this can result in additional import duties.
The import duty rate of a cat tree in Europe is 6%, so even before you have landed your products into Europe you are liable to pay I have to duty rate based on the product code.
Tax is another expense which cannot be avoided, and VAT will again add an additional 20% onto the cost of goods.
As you can see the prices are starting to rise already!
And all of this is before you even factor in warehousing costs which are particularly expensive due to the size of the curtains and the spacing which they take up.
Yes you can find very cheap Cat Trees online but you should bear in mind what we have written above just to give you an idea as to how cheap some of those products have been manufactured and how many corners have been cut trying to save those additional pounds.
What customers may not be aware of is that the cost of container shipping from the Far East into Europe over the last three years during the coronavirus pandemic have increased by over 2000%!
Before coronavirus the cost of a 40 foot high cube container would be on average around US$2700 from China to the UK.
For Christmas 2021, the cost of shipping a 40 foot high cube container from the Far East into the UK was US$19,000!
In fact, the cost of shipping now can sometimes exceeds the cost of the goods manufactured themselves.
The reality is, if you’re looking for a high quality and durable product that does not need to be replaced annually or even monthly on some occasions then you do need to spend a premium price.
It is a false economy purchasing very cheap products without any warranty period as they were simply need to be replaced regularly and over the course of two years you well find that the cost will far exceed investing in a high quality product in the first place with good warranty terms.
This is exactly how our business started.
We made a decision very early on that we only wanted to sell the very highest quality products and what a good decision it turned out to be!
It took only a few weeks before we had our first customer is complaining about buying a low quality and cheap product that couldn’t be replaced and came with no warranty.
As soon as they saw our fabulous selection of products very few of them complain about the price and never made the same mistake again.
I hope this article can shed some light into just how and why cats trees can be considered to be expensive!
To summarise..
You really do get what you pay for and whilst a Lamborghini and a Ford KA will get you to the same destination, the quality of materials used and craftsmanship can never be compared and the experience of our premium cat trees is one similar equivalent to driving that Lamborghini for cats..