When I was a boy, we played a simple game called “king of the mountain”. One person was the king and all the rest had to do what they could to knock the king off the mountain or in our simple version to get the king to fall down or roll down the hill. It was a simple enough game that young boys played for fun. But there were a lot of other things going on in the background that we probably didn’t’ even know at the time. One was the development of a certain pecking order that became apparent. The older boys who were bigger pretty much ran the game. Even though the younger, lesser experienced boys would try to gang up on the older boys and apply their strategies, they would fail just because they were so far behind in strategy and life experience in general. No matter what they tried, desperate as it may seem, the older boys always had a counter for the ensuing attack.
Fast forward 35 years later and here we are in this game again. Only it’s not a bunch of neighborhood boys trying to pull the king off the hill, it is the competition. Armed with nothing more than a few statements like ” better pricing without sacrificing quality”, ” better product at a better price”, we’ll “ship” you our equivalent model for “free” (whoop dee doo) , these guys are trying to go after the market leader with a bunch of cliché marketing statements.
You rarely hear about an original application that was not a re-cap of one that we worked on 15 years ago or a copy of an application blog from EXAIR written 15 minutes prior. You never hear a detailed discussion on how the investment that the customer made paid itself back in a good time frame. You never hear about some new, original product that was released by these guys that has not already been an established part of the EXAIR product line for 18 – 24 months. But then again, that’s what happens when your product development cycle consists of reverse engineer and copy, reverse engineer and copy. Now that’s applying the KISS (keeping it simple stupid) method. Yep, your daddy taught you well!
EXAIR Corporation is a problem solving company. We have the vision, leadership, experience and worldwide network to continue delivering new and innovative products and work them into solutions that our customers need right now.
Notice, we rarely talk about price or being the low-cost solution. We know when we make a recommendation to a client, they will get the original cost of their investment back (usually only within a few months) and the investment continues to pay them in energy savings over the life of the application. Top notch customer service with the end goal of being easy to do business with is how we operate and customers appreciate this method. This is not to say we are not competitive on price as well. We certainly are. You don’t get to be the market leader without price competitiveness being one of the things you pay attention to on a daily basis.
Our imitators seem to think that if they put their product price a few bucks under ours and change its color, that makes them assertive and technically competent. They also operate on the premise that if they put their prices just a little bit below ours and their product specifications just a little bit better than ours ( honesty factor – out the window) that they position themselves for success. Solid people, original ideas, well applied strategy and hard work are the ingredients for success, not marketing campaigns reminiscent of a couple of ten year olds running a lemonade stand.
Neal Raker
International Sales
nealraker@exair.com