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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy6uLfermPU From: David Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2015 7:50 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Competitor parts quality. 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. <!--[if !supportLists]-->- <!--[endif]-->Packetflux only uses the highest quality components to ensure extended range operation for the harshest service provider environments <!--[if !supportLists]-->- <!--[endif]-->Made in the USA (yes there is value in this to a lot of people) <!--[if !supportLists]-->- <!--[endif]-->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] Cell: +1 (303) 746-3590 Skype: danieldwhite Social: LinkedIn: Twitter From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Forrest Christian (List Account) Sent: Monday, August 3, 2015 5:37 PM To: af mailto:[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] | http://www.packetflux.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com
