I think Blichmann sees it as a way to support small homebrew shops. If I can get their gear for the same price everywhere, I might as well get it at my local shop.
There may be something to that.
There's also the effect that price has on perceived quality. People tend to assume that if something costs a lot, it's worth a lot. And if Blichmann can keep their price level from being discounted (at least overtly), then that adds to the image of quality.
Whether it's fair or not, people tend--tend--to view price and quality as correlated. And that's generally true, though you could also look at utility. The Riptide has an output valve; you'd have to add one to the other, cheaper pumps. That valve, among other features, makes the Riptide more expensive, but you can add a valve to the cheaper ones which, then, increases the cost.
But there may be multiple results from their pricing strategy--the impression of quality, supporting homebrew shops....so maybe it's not just the one thing.
*****
I used to make and sell custom golf clubs. They were very high quality (yeah, but just go with it for a moment). I would frequency-match the flexes, swingweight- or moment-of-inertia-match the weights...they were as good as I could make them, and for all intents and purposes, the clubs in a set were matched. Matched. The commercial sets coming off assembly lines are not. I know this because I measured them.
Anyway, I felt quality would tell, and that I wasn't interested in soaking people, so I just added $20 to the cost of components to make a club.
But....that did nothing to help with the image of these clubs. People often buy clubs because of their image. So when people pulled out a driver, say, and it said "Titleist" or "Ping" or "Taylor-Made" or whatever Tiger or Phil or whomever was playing, they could feel good about themselves.
What were people saying when they pulled a "Mongoose" out of their bag? Nothing.
What I should have done--it's so easy to be smart in retrospect--was I should have charged far more and given people a story to tell their friends about how the clubs were so much better than what they had in their bag. "Yeah, yours are Ping irons, but mine cost $900 and they are frequency-matched--see this graph showing that?--and perfectly matched on swingweight. That's why they cost so much, and why they're worth more than yours."
I would have sold fewer sets, but made more money, and on top of that, burnished my reputation as a custom clubmaker.
So, what's Blichmann? Answer: The custom clubmaker in the homebrew world.
