Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

As the owner of a number of businesses past and present I can tell
you that businesses must do two things in order to survive long
term. They must provide what the customer wants. And they must
also introduce new products, (unless they sell consumables) because
eventually the market becomes saturated otherwise. Paul is only
going to sell a certain number of VCOs. I'm sure Paul would tell
you that when a new module is announced there is an initial large
surge of interest and hopefully orders. After that the volume
trickles down to a handful every so often. There are new customers,
but the development cost on a new module must be recovered from the
initial surge, otherwise as the volume of a given module declines,
the cost would have to go up.
Having said that, one customer may really want a Pulse Divider,
another may really want a Rhythm Wheel, but there may be 10 that
want a uSeq. If I were in Paul's shoes I'd bring out the uSeq
first.
There are other factors involved in selling a product beyond the
design phase, so although a pulse divider may be relatively simple
as far as the code, if the anticipated sales are lower than a uSeq,
the cost may have to be higher and the development less urgent for
the pulse divider.
I can also agree with Paul's reasoning in spreading out the release
of new modules. It takes a lot of work to gather together parts,
bag them up and assemble them into kits. There is also a lot of
work in writing the manuals and of course in assembling finished
modules for those that want them. Have you ever done PCB design?
Especially for surface mount? Can you imagine how much legwork it
takes to even find the lowest cost vendor for quality parts? Try
multiplying that times 100 or more. If all the new stuff came out
in January, Paul would have to hire 25 people for one month and then
lay them all off for the other 11 months.
Although Paul may announce a bunch of new products in December and
accept orders, so far as I know he doesn't charge anyone until
shipment. I certainly haven't been charged for the two 480s I
ordered last January. He is not using your money to fund his
development costs.
Paul is one of the hardest working guys I know of and we are the
ones that benefit from his hard work. He could quite possibly
charge more for his modules, look at the new Buchla stuff expected
to come out.
Although I will certainly order the Pulse Divider when it comes out,
in fact I'll take two of them, I am quite content with the stream of
modules coming from SynthTech. I may needle Paul privately from
time to time, but I am quite satisfied.
If I really want a pulse divider by February 1st I'll build my own.
If anybody thinks what Paul does is fun and games I'd suggest they
try it themselves. I'm sure Stooge Larry would concur.
EOR (End of Rant)