The Allure of Premium
A couple months back I had the pleasure of visiting one of the schools that is using our motion control gear. Like many schools, they use our system as just one example in a pile of automation systems. Since I fancy myself a technophile first, and businessman second, I think it is an excellent idea to have multiple flavors of automation systems available to students to learn the differences and similarities of a wide variety of systems. The philosophy behind our products is to keep the costs low and the interface simple, but this comes at the expense of some advanced features and therefore our stuff lacks some of the really cool tricks of higher end systems. Higher end systems from the big boys eschew cost in the quest to bring complicated effects to big shows.
As I toured the theatre, we came upon the new system from another vendor. It was very shiny and new (I like shiny and new). It had a gigantic console, double-21-inch touch-screens, a large amplifier rack, and an array of Little-Lites to illuminate the boundless surface covered with buttons and sliders and touch-sensitive-swipey gizmos. In the upper corner of the console, a tasteful logo was silkscreened onto the matte-black powder-coat finish bearing the name of one of the big boys in the automation business.
“Wow! That’s impressive!”, I drooled.
“Yeah, $250k”, my guide responded with exuberance.
“How many motors did you get?”, I asked.
“5″, he responded and then added, “It’s cool, but the software kinda sucks and the touchscreen doesn’t work in the parts of the application where it would help the most.”
Later on, I demonstrated our latest version of SpikeMark and the students and professor seemed pretty interested.
“Looks great, hopefully next year we can find room in the budget to upgrade.”, the professor said.
I strained to keep my jaw from dropping. How could you spend $250k on a 5-axis rig from one of the “big boys” with questionable functional utility and then have to scrape nickels together to afford a $200 software upgrade that added a ton of features to your existing Creative Conners system.
As I drove home, I replayed the meeting over and over trying to understand why I had trouble selling a $200 upgrade to a theatre that could afford to sling around $250,000 on other automation gear. After meditating on the question, I realized that it’s a problem of my own making. I have always strived to be the company that can produce 80% of the features at 20% of the cost, the mail-order automation company, VHS against BetaMAX. Perhaps I’ve slipped into my own trap of cheap pricing. People deal with prices in tiers. $5000 is a cheap car, but an expensive bike. If you buy a new car for $5000 you’re getting a cheap car that screams utility. A $5000 bike makes you feel like a king. If you spend $5000 on an entire automation system, a $200 upgrade requires some debate. If you spend $250k on an automation system, you keep a stack of $100 bills next to the console as coasters.
Don’t worry, I’m still convinced that there’s great market to serve with our line of automation products. A lot of theatres don’t need fancy consoles, or multi-axis 3d flying, or show control synchronization. For those venues, the Stagehand/SpikeMark is a great value. However, I can’t help but feel a nagging suspicion that there’s another market that would be willing to buy into a premium product. Not the same stuff with just a higher price tag, but an advanced product line that offered a few more features at a markedly increased price. Could we bring some of our intuitive interface, easy expandability, and simple setup to a premium product married with an advanced feature set and Cadillac-esque packaging? I think so…
#1 by BrianF at June 4th, 2009
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If you follow through with these thoughts I look forward to seeing what comes from it. I doubt I’ll be in a place that buys Cadillacs by then, but like you I enjoy drooling over the new and shiny toys even if I can’t play with them.
I would look out for the likely difficulties of trying to support both markets equally. I think your product support is top notch, and probably would still be better than most even if you started having to deal with a broader spectrum, but it seems like a slippery slope.
What could be REALLY interesting is an expandable system that allows customers from both spectrums to draw from the same pool of equipment. Digital cameras come to mind as an example, I can use Canon’s best flash on some of their point and shoot cameras, and I can use their most entry level flash and lenses on their most professional gear. If I needed to added automated 3 axis flying to a show and it meant I could either start my automation from scratch or add an additional processor and some new types of motors to expand a Conners system but use the interface that I’m already used to that would be awesome. Or say I decided that a touch pad would be great for controlling some crazy wagon, if I could add a module to my existing system it would allow my system to grow slowly up to a premium system rather than making me just pass on the idea from the start.
bleh, too much businessman type talk for me, I couldn’t even do it as much as you must have to.
#2 by admin at June 5th, 2009
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@Brian,
Thanks for the comments, it’s great to know that at least 1 person reads this stuff
I agree with your thoughts, if we were to head down this path the “Pro” version would need to inter-operate with the “Standard” gear and there should be a way to upgrade as well as mix hardware on the same show. This would allow theatres to start on a limited budget and rest easy knowing that they won’t outgrow this system if their needs get more complex.
Of course, for us to be able to push the CCI systems into bigger/pricier shows, we would need to offer a lot more services (on-site training, setup, tech, etc.) That may end up being a bigger roadblock because it would demand that we expand the staff significantly. Which is a little funny to say, since we just reduced staff size by 1/3 to trim costs…
#3 by Jon Lagerquist at June 7th, 2009
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One thing that I have found over several decades of playing with various equipment and control systems is that the system can almost always do more than is being asked of it. This has been true of slide control or automation or video or flying systems. This is generally because of one or more of three reasons.
The show does not need more.
The designer / director does know grasp what the system can do, ask for it, does not think about what might be even without concern for the system restrictions. This happens a lot, it is the most common.
The person running the system does not know how to use the system to it’s full capacity. This is a shame, particularly if there is a call for more. While I can figure out how to make stuff happen, can my operator grok the complexity am make sure it is safe.
Not to put a wet rag on the idea of growth, but I am hard pressed to think of something that I can not make happen for one of our shows. There is a lot in the system that I have not gotten into. I have not even gotten deep into the multi speed cues. And with an FX unit there are all sorts on input options that I have not considered.
oh by the way, on the previous post (ruby on rails) Learning is miss-spelled.
Jon