We sell a lot more than just our CNC cut boat kits,from a roll of packing tape to a box of screws to just information,thats free of course.Now and again we find that our kits,plus the rest of the chosen boats parts,start to look a little too high for the customers final budget? once this was taken to the extremes,when the customer,who was about to place his order,finally cancled,saying he never realized he would then need to join a yacht club and rent a marina! he should have taken one of our trailer sailers instead.
A new customer recently costed his proposed new 38ft boat build,the budget was good if not a little tight,between us we ran the numbers,we came closer to an order,then a week or so and silence,not that this is unual but you do start to wonder if the order will happen?
The following emails from the customer, had mentions of a large portion of the available budget being taken up by items such at the Sails and Mast,for which we had supplied quotes from well known suppliers.From my side I could feel the order was slipping away............then I did two things,re priced the kit in our new chinese made marine plys,instead of the normal french made plys,then suggested a wood mast is made instead of alloy?
To the customers credit,he listened to my proposition,he could have just walked away but when I further re-worked the numbers,I found that the chinese plys saved around R15,000 (about U$2200) and that a mast kit in clear Oregon Pine,machined to a 'birdsmouth construction' method cost about the same? this in effect gave the client a mast for free! its not quite that simple of course but we will now save a huge portion of the budget,which in turn allows spending on other parts of the order,which I am pleased to say has been placed and we will cut the boats plys next week.I must also add that in this case the designer of the boat in question Dudley Dix had already included the wood mast sections and related parts in his original design fee,they are really well done,carbon fibre spreaders,all metal detail parts in stainless too.
Roy
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What is the difference in quality between the Chinese and French ply?i.e. What disadvantage does one suffer by going with the cheaper option?
ReplyDeleteWe had plenty of time to think through the issue of the various suppliers, a visual check was showing that there is no difference but if you run your hand over either panel,the chinese is better finished than the french by some margin. Given that glue line is the same,it really comes down to two things,do you want the lower price or do you want the Lloyds certificate and its higher price? We leave it for the customer to make his or her own choice but now have moved all of our pricing across to the lower priced panel.
ReplyDeleteRoy