Ever see those people who bid $1 under the previous Price is Right contestant? Or ever see that competing brand hotel billboard right after the first one advertising additional amenities?
Some people believe the race to the moon in the '60s was a marketing attempt to get one or the other side to expend time and resources outside of strategic Cold War conflict areas.
Likewise, a competitor, armed with specifics on distribution may attempt to preempt or undermine Glowforge sales/marketshare just ahead of any announced schedules.
This is my personal speculation and opinion. It’s only a possibility. However, any bit of information (or disinformation) may be all a company might need to ride ahead of the wave of its competitors.
If I was a competitor and ready to ship before Glowforge, I would! But knowing when they ship doesn’t magically allow a competitor to complete their product. Theirs will be done when it’s done. Not a moment sooner.
You are definitely not an “i”-word. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask and try to understand. I don’t know Dan’s full reason. I can only speculate. Most likely he’ll give his reasons.
Oh, I know. Just that you chimed in so I was hoping you might have some general insight there. I’m looking at the statement and thinking “How does this have anything to do with competition? Sure seems like just a line about how they still don’t know when they’re shipping things and they just don’t want to tell us that again.” But I was hoping I’m wrong.
It’s February, so we should be seeing “hundreds” shipping immediately. (By immediately I mean this month.)
If I was the competition, and if I knew details of distribution I could do more than just release a product before the Glowforge. There are many competing products already released. I could buy remarketing ads targeting people who have searched anything glowforge related, playing on my strengths of already having a product ready to ship same day. I could even advertise a hefty discount to people emailing our sales department there cancellation notice of the glowforge. When the glowforges start shipping, there will inevitably be people upset that their long-awaited tool won’t be shipping in them first. That disappointment can be targeted. If I was really unethical, I could private message people right here in the forum with a discount promotion of my competing product right at the key moment, leaving a mess for a scrambling Glowforge team to clean up. I’m sure a deeper think tank could come up with other ways a competitior could monkey-wrench things given certain specifics.
I also heard the storyline of the next Fast and Furious movie will be about how the crew learns about the exact departure schedule, waits for the shipments to leave the production facility in order to steal the rig carrying them. But, then they realize that their buyer only wants to sell dark-web hacked black market glowforges for evil, so the Rock has to steal them back.
Everything you listed there can be done now. Knowing the shipping schedule doesn’t change any of it. That’s kind of what I’m getting at here… Glowforge’s schedule doesn’t seem to affect others’ schedules. They’re each unique.
LOL! Thanks for that. But I don’t think they’re expecting the great Glowforge heist of 2017.
This is like the old “our insurance won’t let us” for a response. I remember when I worked at a touring theater back in college, the crew would man the doors after, and people would want to go backstage to meet somebody. Our standard response was our liability insurance wouldn’t let them. I have no idea about our liability coverage, or even if it was permitted, it was just the excuse that sounded reasonable enough and couldn’t be assailed by the person standing in front of me since he couldn’t possible know whether it was true or not.
Same here. I imagine super detailed shipping info might in some tiny way help a competitor, but given the broad strokes are already public (e.g. hundreds in feb, mar, ramp up, etc) not sure that knowing it was 220 or 250 units that went out would help anyone. My guess, being cynical, is that the lawyers said don’t give details and use this excuse; it might be true or it might be a smokescreen, but that is what unfortunately we are given.
I don’t deny it might be true. I just can’t see how it can be. Shipping isn’t some patented thing that Glowforge will do differently than anybody else. Not sure how competitors “doing their homework” can glean anything from knowing the schedule. It just seems like we shouldn’t be told the schedule for some reason. And I’m guessing that reason is mass refunds.
I hate that I’m thinking along these lines. But I really don’t see any other way to think about it. And, based on history, it seems the most-likely answer.
What might help is if it’s 10 not hundreds. Although even there I don’t see I’d change my approach as a competitor - with no info, I’d assume GF is missing their internal target and market like that. Either GF responds with the info refuting that or stays silent and that supports my contention. If they did fess up that they were missing again, then I could use that as more defense of my marketing by saying something like “GF continues to miss shipping targets by their own admission, want to hang around for the announcement that yours is delayed or would you like a better unit on your doorstep next week?”.
Heck… As a competitor, I’d assume GF is hitting their internal target, but still market otherwise. Fact is, Glowforge has missed its target multiple times, so the statement wouldn’t be untrue if stated today. There’d be a proper way to spin it so that it’s not a legally-actionable statement.
So, again, no need to not tell us what every single person here is waiting to know the specifics of.
And I think that’s the fear motivating the lack of information.
Ya know… If @dan didn’t go out of his way to not say it, I wouldn’t have minded. It’s really the excuse that’s bugging me. It just doesn’t have any ring of truth to it. Had he just said something like “Shipping schedule is unchanged from the details in December 2016” I would have been relatively okay with that. It’s the coyness (is that a word?) of the statement that says “snake oil salesman.”
No point getting worked up over what Dan might or might not say. I’ll reserve comments until the update has been released. He might just mean that he won’t be predicting exact manufacturing numbers month by month. Reading any Tesla news shows where that gets you.
Certainly. Only talking about what he did say. And, in this case, he said something that makes no sense to me. That said, I’m not a manufacturer. So maybe I’m missing something.
But if you aren’t forthright with specifics, pre-orders may decide to cash in their refund and buy something else. The rate at which that happens probably increases each month and some point the competition still wins.
