Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!uw-beaver!milton!henson!ogicse!pdxgate!parsely!percy!cryo!billc From: billc@cryo.UUCP (William J. Coldwell) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics Subject: Wayne's World (was: JMan Review: RENDER & Conclusion) Message-ID: Date: 28 May 91 12:14:01 GMT Article-I.D.: cryo.billc.3390 References: <1991May18.001642.11147@crash.cts.com> <192b5f2f.ARN0fef@cbmami.UUCP> <1991May24.005621.3479@techbook.com> Organization: Cryogenic Software Lines: 191 In article <1991May24.005621.3479@techbook.com> waynekn@techbook.com (Wayne Knapp) writes: >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. "GENERALLY" for those of you who have their shades on. > Clearly you haven't experience in buying or selling high-end software. Why no Wayne, I wouldn't have ANY experience in that area. (sarcasm alert - run for cover (or at least .advocacy!)) > Many of the best packages available are not sold via dealers. Depends on your dealers and your package. There are some very excellent Amiga packages out there that are handled by educated and experienced dealers. This is also implying that your package is "best". >Besides, going though dealers increases the cost of the product. Hmm. I find it cheaper to go through dealers or (ack!) mail order than to do direct to the source. >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. None - that's about as minimum as you can get. > 2. Selling directly as possible. You sell _only_ direct. >$500 is very cheap for a program (really a complete set of programs) like >Animation:Jounreyman. It's not what you sell it for, it's what it is worth to the user. >AutoDesk's simalar system sell for $2995. Is that >the kind of pricing you want? Who is selling more? I'll put my money on AutoDesk. Price is not the issue. >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! I recall some "personalized" protection involved here. Besides, it was also the fact that "dealers" were out of the question in general. > What Jason wants is for us to sell him Jouneryman for say $250 and then >he could sell it for say $400. Gee, that sounds so unreasonable? That means that I would probably pay ~$300 for it mail-order. >At that rate, our sales would have to increase by ten times before we would >make any money. Too much of a challenge? ;-) >Why should we give away our modest profit? To sell the 10x more that you need to when you lower the price. >Almost all of our money goes back into the product. Yeh, you probably spend at most $40 on the whole package. The main cost is feeding your developers (and we haven't heard too much from Ken lately - did he die from starvation? ;-)) The whole 3DPro1.0 package cost ~$40, and I can't fathom that your packaging is more extensive. >The only change we have made in pricing is NO DISCOUNTS to dealers. That doesn't sound like a change at all. That was the issue to begin with. >People are >welcome to resale the program, but they are going to lose money if they sell >it less for less than we do. Don't worry, they won't. >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. Hmm. If this were the case, then all of the Amiga developers who went through distributors/direct dealers would be in the same position. This just isn't the case. See above statement about "worth". >I hate to think of how many months by royality checks were extremely hurt by >these returns. Why not find out why they couldn't sell it, instead of returning it? >So we just cut that bad end of the business. Now we sell to everyone for the >same price. You might just be at the wrong "end". >>> 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. You are still expecting people to plop down $500 "sight-unseen". Dealers give you that extra sales staff (when they are educated in your product). >(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?) You seem to be missing the point on how dealers work in this grand scheme of selling products. You would be making the most money since your sales would be direct. Your dealers would make the next largest amount, then your distributors, then mail order houses. It's all based on quanity and quality. >>>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. That's too bad, I thought that there was a direction that he was heading. >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.) That's also too bad, since the output is everything. I'm not hung up on Ray Tracing, that was last year... I'm hung up on Radiosity and Photo- realism this year, so we'll have a Radiosity renderer available early '92. >There are a lot of things we do that you would spend years trying to do on >a pure ray-tracer package. Your "years" differ from mine ;-). >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. Then why was that option put in? Seems that if you didn't want to enter the ray-tracing arena you wouldn't have a ray tracer. That's even what AmigaWorld thought when they put JMan up there with 3DPro, Imagine, and LightWave (which is not an RT - I hate comparing Macs and Oranges). >waynekn@techbook.COM ...!{tektronix!nosun,uunet}techbook!waynekn -- William J. Coldwell PLink: CRYO I'm a 3-DPro, wouldn't you Amiga Attitude Adjuster BIX: wjcoldwell like to be a 3-DPro2 ? Cryogenic Software UUCP:billc@cryo 3-D PROFESSIONAL 2.0 #define STD_DSCLMR "The above opinions are mine. You can't have them."