So in today's Pierson Workholding Q&A, I've gotten
this question in lots of different forms over the years.
I just want to put something out there.
So why are your products so cheap and why are your products
so expensive?
Sometimes I think, boy, I can't win with pricing
and no, there is no right or wrong way to price things.
Some people think our products are cheap.
Some people think they're too expensive.
I get it.
One of the one of the funniest stories that comes to mind, a guy said,
I love the channel.
I have a friend that uses your vacuum system.
The smartvac. I showed it to my boss.
We got a job that we definitely need this for.
I'm a fan.
I want to buy it.
I know it's proven, but my boss isn't sure.
And I said, Why not?
He says, Because how could something so cheap work so well?
My tongue in cheek answer is,
Well, I could double the price if it makes your boss feel better.
I'm not going to do that. And I didn't do that.
But then I remember this other story where a guy came up to me
at kind of an open house that I was at.
We had our Smartvav on on a Tormac table, and he walked up
and he said, Man, I really want to buy your stuff.
But why is this Smartvac system so expensive?
So are both of these people wrong or are they both right?
Well, no, it's just different points of view.
So here here is how I would answer this question
to the person asking, Why are your products so expensive?
It's obvious that you value your money more than your time.
Now, this was me and pretty much is me because I'm
kind of like in bootstrap mode.
I started my company debt free.
Every dollar that rolled in sacrifice went right back into the company,
snowball into a bigger, better typically.
Well, yeah, always more expensive piece of equipment and grow organically that way.
So for me, I had to watch every penny.
But then there's other types of more mature customers
that are like, Hey, we have this job or this opportunity.
We need to hit the ground running.
We will gladly pay you and exchange our dollars for your expertise
That comes with not just the product, but the handholding, the application
support, the ability to talk to myself or one of my applications engineers.
The assurance that comes along with buying from Pierson Workholding.
So it really does matter who you're selling to.
One of my favorite customer groups is our custom knife manufacturer.
I mean, these guys, I know lots of you knife makers out there.
It's awesome.
Most of you have day jobs or it's kind of a hobby turned into like now it's
your main source of income or at least a significant source of your income.
And I know that when you buy our pallet systems,
you know that the pallet system is a great tool, but it will take way
too long to design, to build, to implement.
It's going to take too long, so you willingly purchase it
and you can create your pallets fixture to make your life better by making left
and right handles and your blade like in mass, like all at once.
Like a baker doesn't bake a cupcake one at a time.
You put a tray and that's our pallet system and that's it right there.
So when you approach it this way, you go,
okay, let me split the difference between these two questions.
What can I buy?
That's going to require a little bit of my creativity
on top of an existing technology.
The easiest thing that we're all familiar with is CNC machinery.
Yes, you could piece together your own CNC machine,
but it would likely take years.
So when you buy like a bread and butter VF2, most popular machine in America,
when you buy those for about 60, 70, 80 grand, you just shortcuted yourself
an entire year or two to build a comparable machine.
So right there you made a willing exchange when it comes to workholding.
And this is kind of like a little advertising here.
You've already spent 50, 60, 70, 80 grand.
What's another 1500 or $2,000
for a vacuum chuck or a pallet system to take you that much further.
Then you apply your creativity and you trade your time and your talent
to create a fixture that yields you parts, that makes money.
So it is a balancing act.
Sometimes you do need to pinch pennies and you need to only buy
our smart vac vacuum generator and make your own chuck.
Other times you go, No, we're going to buy four starter packages,
pair them up on two different machines and make it rain and make customer parts.
That's a worthy exchange of dollars
for time and time always equals money.
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So until next time, go innovate your production.