Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!dali.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!qiclab!techbook!waynekn From: waynekn@techbook.com (Wayne Knapp) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics Subject: Re: JMan Review: RENDER & Conclusion Message-ID: <1991May24.005621.3479@techbook.com> Date: 24 May 91 00:56:21 GMT References: <1991May18.001642.11147@crash.cts.com> <192b5f2f.ARN0fef@cbmami.UUCP> Organization: TECHbooks of Beaverton Oregon - Public Access Unix Lines: 96 billc@cryo.UUCP (William J. Coldwell) writes: >In article <192b5f2f.ARN0fef@cbmami.UUCP> jason@cbmami.UUCP (Jason Goldberg) writes: >> >> Obviously Jman's use of spines makes it a very interesting product >>to us, but they won't sell it to us! We called up to order two units and >>we were informed that they will not sell to dealers, they offer better >>pricing to end users at shows than they offered us. Further they told us >>that their users were to upscale to purchase from dealers. >Generally, this is a good cover for "we can make a better mark up selling >directly to end users than we can selling to distributors and dealers". >Remember, I said "generally". Sometimes this method is used when the >marketroids feel that the product doesn't compete on a 1:? level with >other new/established products. Sometimes it's used to give the "aura" >of being more that it is. Sometimes.. ;-) That is pure bull. Clearly you haven't experience in buying or selling high- end software. Many of the best packages available are not sold via dealers. Besides, going though dealers increases the cost of the product. The only reason why we can affort to support a program like Animation:Jounery is that we have very, very low overhead. This is done by: 1. Keeping advertising/promotions to a minimum. 2. Selling directly as possible. $500 is very cheap for a program (really a complete set of programs) like Animation:Jounreyman. AutoDesk's simalar system sell for $2995. Is that the kind of pricing you want? Again the beef is not the price, the beef is that Jason is upset because we sell the program for the same price to everyone. There is nothing to stop dealers from buying Jouneryman for $500 and selling for whatever price they can! What Jason wants is for us to sell him Jouneryman for say $250 and then he could sell it for say $400. At that rate, our sales would have to increase by ten times before we would make any money. Why should we give away our modest profit? Almost all of our money goes back into the product. The only change we have made in pricing is NO DISCOUNTS to dealers. People are welcome to resale the program, but they are going to lose money if they sell it less for less than we do. The facts are, that direct sells have always accounted for a very large part of our sales. In fact we seldom made money on software sales to distributors/ dealers. This is even worse now that so many of the Amiga distributors have gone belly up! Second it is very hard to get distributors and dealers to pay. They often delay paying and then later just return "used" software. I hate to think of how many months by royality checks were extremely hurt by these returns. So we just cut that bad end of the business. Now we sell to everyone for the same price. >> It seems to me that Martin is doing a diservice to his product and >>his end-users (both current and future). Would you rather purchase a $500 >>package after getting a hands on demo from someone who really knows the >>products and is farmiliar with its strengths and weaknesess relative to the >>other products available? >Good point. I'll reserve any comments on this subject. ;-) We are not doing any diservice to anyone. People who want Jman buy it. We are not out to rip people off. In fact, it is very hard to buy Jman on impluse. Most people think about spending $500 if they have to make a phone call to do it. (Well maybe we are doing a diservice to dealers, since they can no longer sell the program to end-users for less than we do. Then again why should allow dealers to make more money than we do on sales that they are under-cutting us on?) >>Perhaps they don't want their ray-tracing engine >>compared side-by-side to Imagines... >Impulse has been in the ray tracing game longer than Hash, and that makes >a difference. Martin (IMHO) appears to be heading down the road of "let's >make the Amiga into some high-end animation workstation". At least the >features of his program tend to lead me to that conclusion. The only >problem with this approach is that you tend to leave the mid-level >renderer/animators out of the picture due to price and machine requirements. No. We are doing animation period. There is no high-end animation work- station kind of thing going on around here. So many people are hung up on ray-tracing. But the render is only 1/7 of our Animation:Journeyman. (And it is really improved in the new 1.3 version.) There are a lot of things we do that you would spend years trying to do on a pure ray-tracer package. However, rather than go that direction, let me say again that we are not a ray-tracing company but instead our focus is computer animation. Wayne Knapp Consulting Assoc. Hash Enterprises -- waynekn@techbook.COM ...!{tektronix!nosun,uunet}techbook!waynekn Public Access UNIX at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400) Voice: +1 503 646-8257 Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks