[Elecraft] Elecraft black friday

[Jim Brown]

Think about it -- those who offer large discounts for special sales are 
not losing money, they have large markups built in, and are simply 
reducing them for that sale. Elecraft sells direct, with no commission 
to "dealers" who do nothing but ship boxes in and out the door, and they 
price their products as low as they can and still stay in business. 
Remember that the equipment they sell must support telephone support, a 
service department to do both in-warranty and out of warranty repairs, 
engineers who work on the design of future products, others who do the 
work to put those designs into production, administrative people who do 
the billing, customer contact, purchasing of parts, accounting, filing 
tax returns, and so on.

As a ham for 60 years, I've watched dozens of ham companies go out of 
business because they didn't understand their market, or priced their 
products too low or too high, failed to treat customers with respect, 
and so on.  Ten Tec and Alpha are two formerly great US companies that 
have failed to make a profit and "reorganized." The remains of both 
companies have been acquired by companies 3-6 times removed from the 
originals, and the acquirers are trying to get going again. Both are 
skeleton operations, doing their best to service legacy products.

I'm happy to pay Elecraft whatever Eric and Wayne think they need to 
stay in business, support existing customers, and continue to lead the 
industry. The level at which they have chosen to work ain't cheap. If 
you want a big discount, go to HRO's website and look at their "deal" on 
a TS590SG.

73, Jim K9YC

On Fri,11/25/2016 1:04 PM, Paul Clay via Elecraft wrote:
> Level of discount silly and not at all in keeping with the concept of a "Black Friday" sale, IMHO.