MediumRoastSteam £1k is quite a significant amount of money for a grinder of that class, in my opinion at least.
I completely agree, I suppose it’s like the La Marzocco effect where you’re paying a significant amount more for Venetian manufacture and the name.
The usual selling points in the commercial space - build quality, speed and longevity/ease of service are far less important to a lot (most?) home buyers. Interestingly, Mazzer grinders are actually pretty competitively priced in the commercial space when you pitch say a Super Jolly V Pro (~£1400) against a MK E65 (~£1800).
Like the Moca SD, I’d imagine the main buyers will probably be people like me, who are happy to pay a premium to sacrifice best-in-class performance for design/heritage, build quality and joy of ownership. The problem is that’s probably a tiny portion of the market.
There’s definitely been mention from Mazzer that they’re aiming for the £1000 mark initially. I can’t find the posts now, but it was during the early chat around Host Milan. They’re selling direct so that cuts out the margin for retailers, but also means price to the end-user outside of the EU (which unfortunately now means the UK too) is likely to be closer to 1300-1400 delivered.