Conquista - The Cycling Quarterly Issue 6 | Page 12

CO $ T - P R I C € - VA £ U E - W O R T H
Four little words that are often taken to represent more or less the same thing.
In everyday language they can be interchangeable, but in terms of business,
economics and even philosophy, they have very different meanings.
Cost and price, I guess, are the most similar and straightforward - both mean
the amount of (usually) money required to purchase something. When we talk
about cost this usually sounds like a negative thing - especially if you are the
one putting your hand in your pocket.
The value one places on something tends to indicate more its usefulness or its
desirability. It’s less about an absolute number and more about how much you
want or need to have something and what you are prepared to do, or sacrifice,
to have it.
And worth - well I guess eventually price and worth might meet squarely
in the middle, but until you actually put something on sale then you can
speculate about worth as much as you like. In the end that age old adage
will always prove true - everything is ultimately only worth what someone is
prepared to pay for it, regardless of what its creator might think is a fair price.
These four little words have been kicked around Conquista Towers for a while
now, during which time we have observed major changes in the world of
publishing. The seemingly neverending desire of industry and business to
squeeze the bottom line, compromising impartiality and objectiveness in
pursuit of profit. We’ve always maintained that editorial control of content is
paramount to us - we won’t ever publish something purely because someone
paid us to. As other publishers see their editorial team merge with their
marketing team, you might wonder just how much so called “earned media”
is actually paid for these days. You might ask yourself is it a coincidence that
certain product advertising spend is directed to publications with favourable
reviews. To us, this approach feels like a race to the bottom and it’s not a race
we are going to enter. We don’t do product review and we won’t. Our content
comes from our heart, which does rather strip us bare, since if you consider our
content to be shit, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
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