I have to agree with Daniel on this.
for example its like handing out free service to someone who thinks they
should get it for free when you know that
your service is superior to the other guys on many levels so why d-value
your product.
On 08/03/2015 07:07 PM, Daniel White wrote:
Forrest,
Friendly advice – but look how the big boys do it. They sell on
value. People don’t question things like magnetics because they are
not educated on it (I’ve never given it any thought). You can explain
why you have a superior product without bad mouthing the competition.
-Packetflux only uses the highest quality components to ensure
extended range operation for the harshest service provider environments
-Made in the USA (yes there is value in this to a lot of people)
-Write a simple, easy to understand whitepaper on PoE magnetics and
why Packetflux solution is superior
End of day – its marketing. Create your value proposition. The crowd
that will only purchase on price will always only purchase on price.
As the old saying goes, the bitterness of poor quality remains long
after the sweetness of low price is forgotten
Thank you,
Daniel White
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>__
Cell: +1 (303) 746-3590
Skype: danieldwhite
Social: LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/danielwhite84>: Twitter
<https://twitter.com/DanielWhite84>
*From:*Af [mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Forrest
Christian (List Account)
*Sent:* Monday, August 3, 2015 5:37 PM
*To:* af <[email protected]>
*Subject:* [AFMUG] Competitor parts quality.
This is somewhat of a vent/rant, but also I will also take suggestions
on how to handle this issue.
Since I've been shipping gigabit injector products, I've struggled
with the pricing of the magnetics which are used to inject the power
on the cat5 cable. After a lot of time searching, I ended up using a
Pulse branded HX6096NL. This is a extended temperature range part
(-40C to +85C), and is rated for 720mA@57V per pair, continuous.
This is the least expensive part I've found so far which meets decent
current rating and temperature rating standards. If you're
interested, the datasheet is at:
http://productfinder.pulseeng.com/products/datasheets/HX6096FNL.pdf
Unfortunately, cheap is not cheap. These parts cost me around $4.25 in
quantity, EACH. (See http://www.findchips.com/search/hx6096fnl ). I
could buy non-temperature rated parts for a bit less, but I don't want
to not ship an extended temperature-rated product. This means on a 4
port injector, the parts costs alone to add gigabit are $21.00. For a
12 port injector, this ends up being $61.00.
As a general rule of thumb, you need to multiply production costs by
about 2 or 2.5 to get the final sale price (and even at that I'm not
getting rich) (see
http://www.eevblog.com/2014/05/28/the-economics-of-selling-your-hardware-project/
to understand why*)* - so using these parts effectively adds $42 to
the price of a 4 port injector, and $122 to a 12 port injector, when
compared to a non-injected version.
The frustrating part of all of this is that I see competitors which
are selling products which are amazingly inexpensive. For instance,
I recently bought a 6 port gigabit injector for $37.95, hoping that
once I tore it apart, I'd find a source for an expensive magnetics. I
should note that just the magnetic costs for 6 of the magnetics that I
use are $25.50, leaving only $12.95 for everything else and profit.
So, what did I find inside? They're using a cheap cheap
questionable-quality knockoff of a set of magnetics which (even if
they were genuine) are not only not industrial temperature range (in
fairness they didn't claim this) but worse, they're not rated for PoE
at all - signal only, no DC. I would never in a million years
consider shipping a product with this set of magnetics in it, and I
sure wouldn't use this in my network. Yet somehow I have to compete
with this.
I guess where I'm going with this is: I am starting to get pushback
about my pricing when compared to these low-cost options, and I'm sure
that they're making an impact into my bottom line - it's definitely
difficult to sell against a product which is so much less expensive,
as long as the perception is that the cheaper product isn't in any
material way less functional or meaningfully lower quality.
Unfortunately, the other option seems to be to start badmouthing the
competition, which isn't something I would ever stoop to.
I'm not quite sure how to address this. Any suggestions?
--
*Forrest Christian*/CEO, PacketFlux Technologies, Inc./
Tel: 406-449-3345 | Address: 3577 Countryside Road, Helena, MT 59602
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> |
http://www.packetflux.com <http://www.packetflux.com/>
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/fwchristian>
<http://facebook.com/packetflux> <http://twitter.com/@packetflux>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avast logo <https://www.avast.com/antivirus>
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/antivirus>
