"Why are we waiting for generation 2 of SPD before licensees are selling product?"I can answer that one: it's because if someone started selling "1st generation" SPD at this point, it would call into question the whole reason why SPD Inc. folded last year. The current company line is that it was considered foolish to continue selling "gen 1" SPD with the imminent introduction of "gen 2". Of course, "gen 2" proved to be not so imminent after all, but so far REFR has been reasonably succesful in ignoring that fact. A licensee reversing and re-opening the market for "gen 1" film would be a distinct embarassment and might even suggest that there were problems with "gen 2". Definitely not the message REFR wants to send right now.
"Why wasn't a marketplace established with generation 1 in order to a) kick off the market, b) get some maket awareness, c) start people using generation 1 in real world uses, d) start getting feedback from the market on the pros and cons of the product?"The promoters would argue that precisely this was done, with the various photographed installations supplying the proof. Of course, real shareholders would probably want to see substance in the form of some measure of ubiquity instead of isolated instances that are not too many to individually document on a web page. But I guess "everywhere you look(tm)" means different things to different people.
"Most companies learn from their first generation product and refine it in the next generation. It seems like we have lost years since I heard Robert Saxe say that the next year may be our first profitable year. Why wouldn't the licensees sell what was available to let the world know SPD exists and will be getting better?"At the company I worked for a little over a decade ago, we had just put the finishing touches on a fine little product that would have served its target market well for years, while we worked on the next-generation product. But then our head of marketing got wind of the new development, and started hyping it to his customers. This, to his shock and surprise, killed sales of the product we had just finished, as customers unanimously elected to hold off until the new product was ready, and turned R&D's life into a living hell for two years as the company struggled to rush the new product through the design and development process.
The point of this sorry little tale being, it's really too late to go back anyway. Who would want to buy film that the company has publicly admitted to be flawed? Particularly at the exorbitant prices being charged.
"We lost all that potential product ramp up time to get potential buyers ready to go. Why won't this happen to the generation 2 product? Why aren't we going to wait until generation 3?"In short, what's to stop all this from happening all over again? The simple and obvious answer is, "nothing, of course". The promoters' response will be to get all upset that someone dares to look in the "rear-view mirror" for a clue as to what might happen in the future.
"Some of us longs are real loooong loooongs who believe in the product but I am confused why generation 1 hasn't started us up."And that's a point that's really unanswerable. Early versions of products, especially in the computer industry, may have been pretty weak compared to their present-day forms, but they had sales. People bought the IBM PCjr. People bought 128K Macs. People bought Newtons. Unfortunately, the same simply cannot be said for "gen 1" SPD. How anyone can take that as a good sign for the future is beyond me.
But then again, I'm not a type 3 investor. Nor is our question-asker, I suspect.
No comments:
Post a Comment