On 6/3/2010 11:55 AM, Lee Michaels wrote:
"Steve Turner" wrote

The first thought I had when I saw the old Unisaw had been discontinued in
favor of this new one: If you're going to compete in the SawStop's
pricing territory, you'd better have a _much_ better product or you're
going to have a dud on your hands. If this new machine goes belly-up and
gets discontinued, that leaves Delta without any high-end offering at
all... Reintroduce the "Unisaw Classic" with a riving knife and a
competitive price and I'd bet they sell like hot cakes.

An Asute observation.

I used to work in marketing research. One big problems that a lot of biz
folks had is that they only saw competition as with themselves. The rest of
the world did not matter. They only competed with themselves. For some
folks, that worked. Like the HP printers. They obsoleted their own products.
So it worked for them.

Like you pointed out, Sawstop is a game changer in its price/features range.
Either Delta has to take them on directly or go to another catagory of the
tablesaw market. They need to directly address the competition out there in
the world. NOT compete with one of their own OLD products. A lot of folks
don't get that comcept. A lot of businesses die because of this.

There also is an obsession with the top end of the market. Many companies
want a high end product for prestige and a bigger markup/profit. What they
don't get, apparently, is that even on the top end, THERE IS COMPETITION!
And if you are late to that market, you are fighting an uphill battle. You
better have something that people want. You better have some way that you
can distinguish your product from the others. Or you have just another late
to market, forgettable product.

What I'm seeing is that it's got a lot of "yeah, it would be nice to
have that" features but no "I'm gonna go drop 3 grand on a new saw to
have that" features.