The one time buyer is more important to figuring out what's wrong with
SynthTech, then the faithful MOTMer. Some of those people were very likely
to become repeat customers. Unfortunately, there's no way to recover all
the lost customers who thought they'd build a MOTM system, but realized it
would never happen in a reasonable time, and moved on to another format.
About 6 years ago, I actually got on the phone and called up ∗every single∗
MOTM customer in the US (there were at this time probably 300 of them). And
I asked people this very same question.
I got probably 100 ∗different∗ answers (assuming people were being
truthful). Some of them I remember:
a) a palm tree crashed through my office and destroyed it
b) I got married
c) I got a new baby
d) I got divorced
e) I had to sell it to buy (fill in the blank, usually it was a car or new
house)
f) I have no job now/crappy job (this was the case ~ 2003 after the .com
bust, the market not the synth company)
g) I bought a few kits but they were harder to assemble than I thought
h) I bought some modules but I could never make it sound like (fill in the
blank).
i) I kept waiting for you to have a (blank) but you never did.
j) I like soft synths now, I can get a 100 of them for free! (this is when
they were first appearing)
My #1 favorite call was to a guy that ∗totally freaked out∗ on me. The call
went something like this:
Me: Hello, this is Paul Schreiber of Synthesis Tech and I wanted to just
follow up on your modules you bought from me."
Him (about 3 seconds of dead air later): "You're calling me? Why are you
calling me for? Did I give you permission to ever call me?"
Me; "Umm....I'm just seeing how you like your modules and if there is..."
Him: (voice is up 12dB in both volume and pitch): "You are not supposed to
call me! This is outrageous! I can't believe it!"
Me: "I'm sorry to distrurb you, I will make sure that..."
Him: "You know what? I'm want you to immediately refund all my money! This
is like the worse thing anyone has every done to me! I want ALL MY MONEY
RIGHT NOW!!!"
He shipped them back and I sent him about $1800.
The short answer: there was no mitigating factor I could point to and go
AHA! The freaking knobs are the wrong size! or The font is all wrong....son
of a bitch!!!
Now, looking a the last 4 years, I agree 100% that's it's a combination of
my slowness, the MOTM price and the availability of alternative sources.
Question is: is it too late for me? If in Novemeber I have 4 new modules,
100 of each boxed up and on the shelf will it matter to the ∗new∗ users, or
am I in the long-tail of my installed base of < 70 active buyers (10% of all
buyers). This is what I am struggling with. The established users are free
to "cherry pick" modules that appeal ∗only to them∗ while the
window-shoppers are like Crap that stuff sure is expensive compared to Euro
or .com.
Paul S.