Before I start to go through the visual documentary of my own log cabin project, I’d like to build a foundation for the story. It started long ago, back in 1997 when my cousin told that he had a million dollar opportunity (actually it was a two thousand dollar opportunity, but let’s not mind about that). He had come across two cheap Honka log cabin kits that just screamed to be bought.

After a quick phone call, Honkarakenne made some arrangements and following day the log cabin kit was resting in my cousin’s garage. Actually at that point there were two of them, but since this is a story of only one of those cabins… You’ll just have to follow the storyline of the late bloomer. Unfortunately it took almost a decade from the kit to finally make it to present location by the lake. But that is a topic for a whole new picture.

Log homes and log cabins can be surprisingly difficult products to understand. You get all kinds of sets and degrees of deliveries. Moreover, log homes and log cabins are image products, just open any log home magazine and it is all about emotion to have one not about money it takes to buy one or skill it takes to build one. These are the reasons why it is so easy to be lured by advertising while shopping log building.

Seth Godin had a piece about nutty pricing. I don’t know how was the case with Seth’s example, but nutty pricing can sometimes be clever pricing. Many log home companies name various delivery choices with normal buyers campaign mentality in mind. They might have four different delivery packages for certain model e.g. like this: basic, normal, deluxe and service.

The idea is to rely on our logic thinking. We automatically go and presume that service package is the best, however they set the package pricing lower than deluxe so we believe the company when it says that service package now has special pricing because of the season (it is always the season for log homes). If we go into the details and compare the delivery contents, we notice that deluxe was indeed much better, but to notice that, you have to go and have long discussions with the sales agent.

Mind about the product and the price it is not always what the label says.